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Illinois School Board Journal
March/April 2002
Setting the agenda
by John Cassel and Cathy Talbert
John Cassel is IASB field services director for the DuPage, North Cook and Starved Rock divisions; Cathy Talbert is director of policy services.
Talk with school board members and you will quickly collect a short list of hopes for their schools:
However, many board members are puzzled about the connection between the boardroom and the classroom. How can a school board, sitting in a meeting, influence what goes on in the schools?
A school board serious about pursuing high aspirations for its schools must learn how to use meetings to get the job done. This becomes a difficult challenge for many board members who, as movers and shakers in their private lives, are used to rolling up their sleeves and getting involved. For them, a meeting may seem the antithesis of action: a place where people talk but don't actually perform real work.
However, high-performing school boards have found that "meeting" and "work" are not mutually exclusive terms. They understand the board meeting is where board work gets done. The difference comes in the definition of "board work."
Meetings are what school boards do. They consider agenda items, adopt policy and set direction for the district. The sometimes-surprising reality about organizations is that there is nothing more powerful than a clearly articulated sense of direction and focus. Boards that provide clear focus and direction can make an astounding difference, but only if they have good meetings and "work" the right agenda. But, what does a good meeting look like, and what's the right agenda?
Focus on "board work"
Board work is different than staff work. The community elects a board to assure the district reflects community aspirations, values and concerns. The board hires a professional staff to solve problems and deliver quality education. Too many boards spend too much time doing work better done by staff. With only limited time (three to eight hours per month for most boards), the board's agenda should focus on areas where the board can add unique value.
Micro-management hurts the board, the staff and students. A board that spends its time doing tasks more appropriate for administrative staff will surely not have adequate time to carry out its governing (board) responsibilities. Plus, a board that usurps staff tasks cannot hold its staff accountable for results.
The essential board responsibility is transforming the educational needs, desires and wishes of the community into policies that direct the community's schools. This is not an easy task, and only the board can do it effectively. The job is to gather all the voices in the community into a common purpose. To fulfill this obligation, the board must devote significant agenda time to bringing the diverse perceptions and concerns found in every community into a clear focus and direction.
To do this, the board must create space where dialogue and reflection are valued, where differences are embraced, not avoided. Part of creating that space is an agenda that makes room for it. A good agenda focuses board time on the essential board responsibility -- clarifying ends -- and includes time for dialogue, listening and sharing.
If the preponderance of a board's time is devoted to clarifying values, goals and vision, how can the board deal efficiently with some of its other duties? As a public corporation and (typically) a multi-million dollar enterprise, some business items always need to be cared for: paying bills, hiring staff, approving contracts. Many boards use a consent agenda to expedite these items efficiently, making sure they do not crowd out "key" board tasks. Using a consent agenda says these items need resolution, but because they are not areas where the board can add particular value, the board will not devote much time or energy.
A focus on the future
It only takes a year or two of board service to realize there is a "governance cycle." Every school board considers expected topics year after year -- things like the budget in the summer and the levy in the fall. However, it's a mistake to simply recycle agendas, month by month, year after year. Instead, on a periodic basis, gather the whole board's wisdom about what's important and where the board may have leverage.
List governance items that need attention as well as topics or issues that offer future promise or threat. The board will end up with a combination of "jobs" and "issues." Jobs may include annual review of mission and purpose, goal setting, superintendent evaluation and board self-evaluation. Topics might include enrollment projections and space usage, or aligning professional development with goals. Once gathered, the list can easily be transformed into an "annual agenda." The annual agenda sets out a work-plan for six to 12 months of board meetings.
An annual agenda ensures a board's focus on the future by proactively anticipating topics. It also allows the board meeting to be truly "the board's" -- to be future focused versus a meeting to review superintendent activity (the past). In addition, an annual agenda helps prevent getting captured in "the urgency of the present" by assuring that board members' priorities, which should reflect community priorities, occupy the board's time and drive the district's direction.
Student learning is the core
How can the board expect the district to focus on student learning if it does not? Even some boards that are focused on the future miss the mark in terms of student learning. Many important concerns other than student learning may seem compelling, such as buildings, budgets, sports and personnel. But just as the board's agenda should be crafted around a concern for the future, the agenda should reflect a deep concern for student learning.
The board's part in student learning is not curriculum or instruction. It's expected outcomes and standards. Boards need to answer a primary question: In order to succeed in tomorrow's world, what do our students need to know and what must they be able to do? School boards need to dialogue with their communities about appropriate educational expectations and the success of their schools in meeting them.
An easy assessment is to simply count the board's agenda items that directly relate to student learning. If the percentage seems too low, the board needs to find more agenda items where student learning is central. But most boards already have too much on their plates. The idea is not to add more, but to reassess what is put on the board's plate. To focus on student learning, other items may need to be delegated to staff. By clarifying its expectations and setting limitations within which it expects staff to function, a board can comfortably delegate certain items allowing it to focus on student learning.
Accommodating both board needs and staff needs
Just as a well-governed, well-managed district incorporates both board wisdom and staff wisdom, a good board meeting accommodates staff needs as well as board needs. This is why the agenda is planned by the superintendent and board president working together. While any board member should feel welcome to request items be placed on the agenda, the key is being clear about where the board can add value and where it simply needs to take action to support the superintendent.
Here again, many boards choose a consent agenda for mandated items, like paying bills and personnel matters, or items that are clearly staff work and come to the board only as an FYI. However, a consent agenda is not used just to get the board home for the 9 p.m. news. It's to free time for board dialogue about important, future-oriented topics.
Do your own assessment. In reality, what percent of the board's time is spent on board work? How does the board make time available for those important, but not urgent, items that are easily put off or given short shrift? How many times has a typical board said, "We're too busy to take time for a board self-evaluation"? Or, "We planned to return to the review of that policy, but it just got lost." A board that wants to make a difference will know it needs to focus on just this work.
Modeling expectations
Good meetings don't happen by accident. They need thoughtfulness and care if the board is to set the pace in terms of district culture and tone. An ineffective board will have a hard time holding the staff to effective management, much less effective education. But a board that models careful attention to conducting a valuable meeting sends an important signal.
A board that listens well, is disciplined and communicates carefully can expect those same qualities in its district. A board that focuses on student learning will see, over time, that same focus in the district. A board that models respect and concern
for community and staff will see respect and care exercised in relationship to district students and families.
Informed decision-making
Informed decision-making requires that boards take monitoring and data analysis seriously. It's not enough to set a direction and delegate authority. The board has an obligation to continually monitor progress towards its vision and goals. To do this, the board needs good access to relevant data and careful analysis so that it can regularly, and in a public way, review data for information and meaning. A wise board looks to the staff for skill in these areas.
In a continuous improvement model, the very process of carefully attending to the data may suggest avenues for improving performance. For example, by disaggregating data, the district can discover which categories of students are doing well and which categories of students are struggling. Only by directing efforts toward those who can profit from the additional instruction will all students be assured of the resources to succeed.
Boards should receive monitoring reports and data analysis in an understandable format, well in advance of board meetings, to allow time for board members to read and think about the information provided. Board members also should have the opportunity to raise and resolve questions about the reports and data in advance of the board meeting. The agenda should provide time for meaningful dialogue about what can be learned from the reports and data, and what action, if any, the board should take to enhance progress toward district goals.
Stakeholder friendly meetings
The board sits in trust for the community, and its meetings should express this valuable commitment. Visitors should feel welcome and helped to understand what is happening. However, many boards try to do too much with the board meeting. Report items from administrators and teachers are too often aimed at informing the press and community, rather than enhancing board understanding.
The board meeting is the principal opportunity the board has to engage in significant topics and consider district programs. Board members should read the reports as homework and be ready to actively discuss and debate the issues at the meeting. When the district has informational items to share with the public, better venues exist than board meetings.
Separate contexts should be created, in addition to the board meeting, to inform and engage the community. An added bonus of alternate venues is the encouragement of public questions and freewheeling dialogue, items often out of place at the board meeting. Try events like coffees, forums, open houses and press releases. The goal is not to burden the board meeting with tasks that routinely take valuable time from key board work and that could be accomplished more effectively in other ways.
Most board members have heard the popular quip, "Board meetings are meetings in public, not public meetings." It's important that both the board and the community understand the distinction. It's a mistake to try to achieve too many objectives with the board meeting.
The public will appreciate and trust a board when it sees:
Both the board and community will value good meetings, set on the right agenda.