Dear Parents & Staff:

So far, this column has covered five of the six of the Board governance principles: Clarifying the District Purpose, Connecting with the Community, Employing the Superintendent, Delegating Authority, and the Board Monitors Performance.  Now I will discuss the sixth and last of the Foundational Principles of Effective Governance: The Board Takes Responsibility for Itself.

According to the Illinois Association of School Boards, “The Board, collectively and individually takes full responsibility for Board activity and behavior.  Board deliberations and actions are limited to Board work, not staff work.” This may sound simplistic, but trying to define the line that separates staff work from bo ard work is not always intuitive. One way that boards can help themselves in this process is to take advantage of the training offered by the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB). This organization is a voluntary association of local Illinois school boards and is not affiliated with any branch of government. To belong, the board pays dues based on the number of students in the district. The services that the IASB provides include a monthly newsletter (short articles concerning current or upcoming issues and meetings), a bimonthly journal (in depth articles), regular dinner meetings, training sessions, a web site (www.iasb.com), a lobbying association and an annual meeting in November for all members in the state.

The training sessions are extremely valuable for helping board members understand what their job entails and how best to approach it.  There are courses for new board members, new board presidents, on school law and finance, on improving existing boards and on detecting a compelling vision, to name a few. Another extremely valuable training experience the IASB provides is board self-evaluation. In this process the board works with their IASB representative to assess how well they are working together and what unmet expectations board members or the Superintendent might have about the board proceedings. It is important that board members take advantage of as much of the information available as possible since there is little to prepare you in the non- school board world for this job.

There are other sources for information that can assist board members in focusing on their responsibilities. For example, our board is currently reading Boards that Make a Difference: a New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit and Public Organizations by John Carver and will be discussing how we can incorporate his suggestions into our processes.  We next plan to read Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins. Dr. Herrmann also regularly provides us with “The Board,” a brochure on a single topic related to school boards prepared by The Master Teacher, Inc. School board members certainly must be avid readers to keep up with all this information.