Ah, January is School Board Appreciation month in Texas, and so I sit on the last day of this month to ponder such Some call it Board Recognition month, but that may be because most of the folks in town do not know or recognize school board members. Previously the governor signed a proclamation declaring it so, but he no longer does that. I do not know if it is because he refuses as he has no respect for school boards, or if the school board association stopped asking because they have no respect for the governor. Regardless, across Texas at January Board Meetings there is “hurrah” regarding our appreciation for the folks who step forward to serve as school board members. It is not a mere coincidence that January is also the month wherein most Boards evaluate their superintendents, act on their contracts and set their salary. There is nothing like a public display of affection on the part of the victim prior to a secret screwing behind closed doors.
(If you think I exaggerate, check on the list of articles on TexasISD.com regarding superintendent changes this month. Districts listed include Cleveland, Manor, College Station, Canutillo, and Boswell. And that is just this week!)
There is a mantra taught to superintendents regarding the
relationship between school boards and the superintendents of schools. The
superintendent is to be ever mindful that from the board’s point of view it is,
“My kids, my schools, my money.” The
implication is the superintendent serves the wishes of the board. I would propose a mantra for
superintendents: “My profession, my
experience, my knowledge.” And therein
lies the rub. What happens when a
superintendent acting on best practices, best research, best knowledge, best
experience, and policy and procedure finds him or herself at odds with the
wants and wishes of a board? Simple
answer: the superintendent will lose and leave, or cave and stay becoming a
politician rather than an educator. I
look at the number of superintendent vacancies in this state and read the data
that implies most superintendent turnover is triggered by “governance” issues
(read that as conflict with the Board) and I wonder what the heck we are doing
to our public schools.
So, what do school boards do, anyway, he pines rhetorically? The powers and duties assigned to the Board
are listed in the Texas Education Code, Chapter 11, Subchapter D. There is a précis version of the list in
Board Policy BAA (LEGAL).
The law and the policy begin with the phrase, “The Trustees,
as a body corporate, have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee
the management of the public schools of the District.” In other words, individual board members do
not have any more authority than any other member of the community. Only when they meet as a legal body, only
when they vote in public, do they have authority. That is really hard for many board members to
accept. Individual members feel free to
simply communicate to the superintendent that they would like to see such and
such, or have the superintendent do so and so.
Legally such requests carry no weight.
In fact, such requests are contrary to the required relationship of
boards and superintendents. However, it
is very difficult for a supe to ignore such requests, legal or not.
The phrase “oversee the management of the district,” is the
source of much of the potential conflict between the board and the supe. There is a huge difference in overseeing the
management of the district and managing the district. The supe manages the district. He or she is responsible for all the
day-to-day operations of the system, supervision, evaluation and assignment of
all employees, implementation of the budget, compliance with all state and
federal regulations and mandates, accomplishing the goals and objectives of the
district, etc. School Boards are not
qualified to manage a public school system and the law is clear that the CEO,
the superintendent, is responsible for that.
But Board members have a really tough time with that as well. Many board members operate on the assumption
that they could run the district, or that they should run the district. Some board members feel free to conduct
professional personnel evaluations which is clearly illegal and beyond their
scope. Some board members feel free to
intervene in superintendent assignment of personnel which is clearly illegal
and beyond their scope. But they just
cannot stay out of it. These conflicts
are structured by lack of board understanding of what boards are tasked to do.
Of the 19 powers and duties listed in law and policy, only a
few trigger conflicts. (Many, like the
requirement to set up grievance procedure, adopt goals and objectives, have an
annual financial audit, etc., are perfunctory practices in all districts and do
not require any board action save approval.)
The two main sources of conflict are (1) the requirement that the board collaborate
with the superintendent, and (2) the requirement that the board hold the
superintendent accountable for achieving district goals. Boards do not like the first one and fail to
understand the second one.
The median size school district in Texas has less than 1,000
students. That means that more than half
of the districts in the state are in small towns. School boards in such settings are very
different than school boards in large urban and suburban districts. In small towns many, many board members grew
up there, attended school there, and have not really lived anywhere else. Small towns provide very few opportunities for
citizens to gain any type of corporate experience and most board members are
either sole proprietors or punch the clock for someone else. Sole proprietors do not understand why the
supe cannot just order things to be done, and clock punchers generally resent
management and yearn for the opportunity to be a “boss.” Those two dynamics wreck havoc with the board
and superintendent relationship. Large
systems are much more likely to have professionals like lawyers and corporate
executives on the board. Such people
understand both the expertise inherent in the superintendent’s role and
corporate decision making. Not so in
small towns.
In small towns it is very difficult for boards to
collaborate with the superintendent if the board believes they know all they
need to know to manage the district.
Further, such board members receive informal input from life-long
friends and from teachers; input that matters a great deal to them and they
tend to be very reluctant to share.
Rather than review data for decision making, they act on perceptions
formed by an invisible constituency. Members
of a seven member school board in a district with 100 teachers are much more
likely to have long standing personal relationships with some teachers. Members of a seven member board in a district
with 9,000 teachers are not so likely to know and interact with teachers, much
less a teacher from every campus. Add to
that the fact that many board members have children in the system and/or
relatives on the payroll and it is clear that input from kids and kin will
always carry more weight with a board member than professionally collected data
presented to the board. In other words,
in small systems a professionally trained superintendent is much more likely to
have conflict with a board or board members who wish to manage the district,
and a board or board members are much less likely to collaborate with a superintendent
if they perceive they can do the job themselves and perceive themselves to be
the “boss” of the superintendent.
Further, if the district meets the goals stated in the
district plan there is no reason to run off the superintendent. In fact, doing so would violate the procedure
and the intent of the law.
Most interesting to me is the fact that since the early 1900’s
the prerequisites, knowledge and training required to be a superintendent has
increased dramatically. There have been
no similar changes in the prerequisites to run and be elected to the school
board. As long as a person is at least
18 years old, registered to vote and a resident of the district he or she can
run for the board. That allows the
possibility of a highly complex, highly regulated professional learning
organization to be governed by high school drop outs. One cannot be elected judge unless one is an
attorney. One can be elected to the
education board and lack education.
Once elected, a board member is safely set until the next
election. There is no recall provision
for board members.
Further, there are no prerequisite trainings for board members. The state lists required hours and topics for
training to be completed by board members each year, but there are no teeth in
that law, just jaw. Failure to procure
the required hours results in no consequences for the board member save having
his or her name read aloud at the December Board Meeting as a member who lacks
training hours. A newly elected board
member in May is allowed to participate in the superintendent’s evaluation in
June with no training at all.
That fact leads to further issues. Every employee in the school district is
evaluated by a professional, certified administrator. From principals to teacher’s aides,
evaluation is conducted professionally by someone who holds at least a master’s
degree, has received hours and hours of rigorous training in evaluation, has
passed a test certifying they can evaluate staff, and passed a rigorous test certifying
that they are an administrator. Any
employee who feels he or she has been evaluated in ways not appropriate has the
opportunity to request an additional observation, file a grievance, have a
hearing, appeal not only to the superintendent and the school board, but may
appeal all the way to the Commissioner of Education. To recommend nonrenewal of a professional the
supervisor must identify weaknesses in writing, share all the data with the
professional leading to the recommendation, develop a growth plan for the professional,
and notify the professional in advance that he or she will not be recommended
for further employment.
All of the above is true for everyone in the system except the
superintendent. The superintendent is
the only employee in a school district who is evaluated by lay people with no
required training. The board does not
have to provide data to the superintendent in advance of their action on his or
contract. The board does not have to
notify the superintendent in advance that they are going to non-renew the
superintendent. The board is not
required to develop a growth plan for a superintendent. The board is not even required to document
what they perceive to be shortcomings in the supe’s performance. And, there is no provision for the
superintendent to appeal the board’s evaluation and contractual decision to
anyone. It is amazing that anyone agrees
to be a superintendent under those terms.
All of this is to say that a group of lay people with no
required level of education or training are empowered to non-renew a superintendent
without advanced notice, without a growth plan, without documentation and based
on perception, hearsay and rumor from an invisible constituency. That may have made sense in 1903 when less
than 25% of our population had a high school diploma. It surely does not make sense in our current
regulated, high stakes, research based educational organizations. Further, the board can attempt to operate in
areas beyond their legal authority and hold the superintendent accountable for
not supporting them. Surprisingly, Texas
experiences a high degree of superintendent turnover.
What can we do about all the above? I know it will come as surprise to you that I
have some suggestions. The first are
pretty simple. School Boards should
delegate all hiring, all non-renewal and all personnel assignments to the
superintendent and get out of the evaluation model. Should they relinquish that authority, two
things will happen. One, when they receive
complaints from their invisible constituency they will be forced to refer those
complaints to the supe else wise nothing will happen. Second, if they really want to hold the supe
accountable then the supe should be able to pick and retain his or her staff. Having the board pick or reject employees and
then tell the supe to make things happen is ludicrous.
The second simple thing we could do is limit board meetings
to once a quarter and eliminate the Executive Sessions except for those very specific
reasons found in law. Meeting once a
month is just often enough to convince the board that they know what is going
on. It also allows them to make
decisions and go home leaving the supe with the job of implementation. There is no reason a board must meet every
month, they just do as a matter of tradition.
An alternative to this suggestion would be just the opposite and have a
board meeting every week. If that were the
case then the supe could organize trainings for the board on a variety of
topics improving their ability to make decisions. It should be one or the other, rarely meet or
meet each week.
Other suggestions include asking the legislature to provide
for the possibility of a recall vote for school board members. Virtually every other elected official in the
state is subject to a possible recall by the voters. Not school board members. Secondly, there should be some teeth in the
required training components for board members.
Such teeth should include the inability of the board member to vote
until he or she has received the required training. Or at least, they should not be allowed to
participate in the superintendent’s evaluation if they lack the required
training. There should be accountability
tests annually with the results made public after board members receiving the
training to ensure they understand their role.
Superintendents should be afforded the same evaluation
requirements as teachers. There should
be advanced notice if there is a non-renewal possibility, there should be
required sharing of board collected data and input regarding the superintend
tent’s performance. When
boards share complaints and concerns in writing with the supe then he or she should
have the opportunity to respond in writing.
There should be an appeal path if the supe feels that his or her evaluation is not grounded in good practice or good judgement. Perhaps such an appeal could be to an impartial professional hearing
officer provided by the state. Kids,
parents and staff are provided such an opportunity. Yes, that would be added expense, but it
would be nothing like the attorney fees and search consultant fees needed to
hire a new superintendent.
It might be going too far to require board members to have
at least some post-high school education.
It might be going too far to require that no candidate for the board may
have a relative already employed by the district or children attending the
district’s schools. If we went that far
though, we would have very different school boards.
In fact, if we implemented all the above reforms we would
have board members who have more life experience than current board
members. We would have board members who
have more education than some of the current board members. We would have board members who were much
more objective. We would have boards
that are held more accountable for their actions and subject to consequences
should they deviate from the legal description of their roles. We would have board members who rely less on
perception and hearsay which they are not required to share to board members who
more closely approximate a professional evaluation system.
It is time to up the requirements to serve as a board
member, especially in those systems with enrollment in the bottom half of the
state’s districts. I know that serving
on a board is volunteer work. I know boards
are subject to constant input and complaints.
I know they are volunteers and spend many hours in meetings and reading
to fulfill their role. I understand that
few may be willing to serve on a board with these requirements. And in all my years as a superintendent I
have attempted to reflect the genuine respect I hold for these elected
officials.
But if we took the steps outlined above, then serving on the
School Board would be a much more rigorous and important role, and Board
Appreciation month would have more meaning than an empty public or political gesture.
Given that, I strongly support Board Appreciation month.
