The Board is Ready to Govern
Before it Performs its Major Functions, a Board Must Ready Itself
Ready to Govern
Board Readiness to govern is an area of responsibility in which the board creates, maintains, and ultimately institutionalizes a foundation of knowledge, skills, and dispositions - a mindset and an approach - that enable it to carry out its other, more observable governing responsibilities:
Strategic Voice – The board gives voice to the community’s vision and values, expressed externally through the board’s advocacy ‘voice’ and internally through its policy ‘voice’;
Operational Guidance – The board writes policy that guides the superintendent’s management role, the governance role of the board itself, and the boardsmanship role of each individual board member; and
Accountability – The board assures on behalf of the community that the district, the board, and individual board members are held accountable for their responsibilities.
Before beginning its governance practice, a board should first be ready to practice, understanding its responsibilities, both legal and moral, to the community it represents, to the staff it commands, and for those students whose success depends on them. It should know with clarity what its purpose is. To be ready to carry out its purpose, it should define its board role, distinguishing it from that of the superintendent. It should assure that its members and all others in the district understand that role, fully comprehending the unique nature of a board that “stands in” as trustee for its community, and ready to serve on their behalf. Like the character Paul Newman portrays in the movie “Cool Hand Luke” a board has got to “get [its] mind right.”
If it adopts the right mindset for its governing role the board increases its chances of success because of the way it thinks about servant-leadership and growth, with values and attitudes that predispose the board to act. If it develops a sound approach to the job, carrying out in a systemic and systematic way the responsibilities of strategic voice, operational guidance, and accountability, it is more likely to succeed because of the way it acts. When well-oriented and pointed in the right direction, a board is less likely to stray off course and become vulnerable to ever-present and often-conflicting adult interests that too often get in the way of student learning.
Governance Mindset and Strategic Approach are two components of Board Readiness.
Governance mindset means having a clear understanding of the responsibilities of governance and appreciating the relationship of governance to organizational success.
Campbell and Fullan encourage a governance mindset that includes focusing on children, watching the budget, keeping a long-term perspective, preserving a positive organizational culture, assuring accountability, and informing constituents (footnote 1).
Crabill advocates for a board mindset that believes “student outcomes won’t change until my behaviors change” and cautions that without it “…nothing else – none of the knowledge, none of the skills…” will enable you to achieve the outcomes you seek for students. Underlying all of these is a willingness to fully embrace the board’s responsibility (footnote 2).
Strategic approach is defined as the systemic and systematic way in which an effective board goes about carrying out its governance responsibilities, including how it: creates, gives voice to, and maintains a strategic level vision with measurable outcomes, and strategic level values that create clear performance expectations; monitors to assure those outcomes are achieved and expectations are met; and takes constructive board-level action in response to monitoring by making corrections and adjusting guidance in order to assure future success.
The effective board institutionalizes board readiness in the form of a stable governance mindset and approach. Everyone in the district fully understand the board’s role, separate and distinct from that of the superintendent, and they develop an appreciation for the responsibility, authority, and accountability inherent in that role. Even without turnover of members the board should periodically set aside time to review, reflect, refresh, and reset its mindset and its approach to ensure that actual board practice (what the board does in practice) is aligned with theory (what the board says about those important components) about the board work that leads to success. This is the valid purpose of board retreats, during which the board can review its performance, reflect on its readiness, refresh its governance mindset and reset its strategic approach.
Source:
A Framework for School Governance (2018) Rick Maloney