Our services are comprehensive and fully-customized training plans that stem from our knowledge of best practices, governance team interviews, and board meeting observations. Highlighted here are a few key areas of focus:
Build a collaborative board/superintendent relationship
Collaborative board member and superintendent relationships are essential to accomplish meeting district goals and support student achievement. This requires frequent, diplomatic communication both in external and internal settings. To be successful in creating this relationship, board members focus on long-term strategic planning while the superintendent focuses on the implementation of policy. We can assist the team in building trust and respect between the board and superintendent to create a foundation for a collaborative relationship.
In depth review of board roles and responsibilities vs superintendent’s role and responsibilities
The role of the board of education and superintendent are unique in their own right. Because of this uniqueness it is imperative that boards understand their role as a high-level governing role that allows strategic and systemic thinking in order to support the superintendent in the day-to-day operational and educational role. Just as important to note is the superintendent’s role as the chief executive officer of the district who is charged with ensuring that teaching and learning, at the highest levels, are taking place in the district for all students. We help board governance teams work within their respective roles.
Develop habits of highly effective boards
School boards are tasked with engaging the community in the Vision, Mission, and Strategic Goals of their school district. This is accomplished by establishing high educational standards for all students and simultaneously monitoring and evaluating the outcome. School boards are responsible for ensuring their district is running properly. In order to govern at such an effective level, boards must possess characteristics that are conducive to high-impact boards. We assist boards utilizing our in-depth experience and analytical approach to training and development of school board member/superintendent teams.
Develop board operating procedures (board norms/board culture)
Effective school board teams create agreed-upon expectations of one another as they govern collectively on behalf of the school district. Boards recognize the need to establish baseline civility, increase productivity, focus on the Mission, and ensure fiduciary responsibility for district’s resources. Our team assists boards with governing in a healthy space (even a healthy board is not free of conflict) to be productive, effective, and efficient.
Identify inequities, through data collections, and how inequities impact your district
Educational equity has been explored from many angles and school systems must continue to be intentional about dismantling institutional and structural inequities by developing common expectations, creating an equity framework, and developing action plans and improvement standards supported by board policy. Disruption of societal and historical inequities and eliminating disparities based on student and family characteristics must be addressed by the governance team so that all students have an equal opportunity to obtain a quality education. We help board members and superintendent team identify and address inequities, through data collection, to create a learning environment that is representative of the entire student body.
