NEAT > Roles & Responsibilities > Student-Centered Accountability > Introduction > School Boards	Print View

Fall 2003 issue of Parent Press, Parents for Public Schools.

School boards are the “buckle” between schools and community, as described by Donald McAdams, a longtime school board member and advocate for the reform of school systems. Locally elected or appointed school boards govern the nation’s 14,890 school systems, representing their communities in decisions about teaching and learning, staff and finances.

Today, school district leaders, especially board members, must be equipped to take on an array of roles and responsibilities. Several of those were identified by a national task force on school district leadership, coordinated by the Institute for Educational Leadership:

• Changing priorities of education reform
• Focusing simultaneously on many things, including academics along with services and supports to meet the social and behavioral needs of students
• Leading and managing diversity in a changing society
• Listening to the citizenry in the decisionmaking process
• Dealing with ambiguous roles and responsibilities

The job is multifaceted and the technical aspects are complex. The inner workings of school districts are complicated, as are local, state and federal laws. And the current context of the No Child Left Behind Act places increased pressure on school boards, just as it does on educators, to improve student achievement. In addition, board members must figure out how to adjust programs and procedures to manage the NCLB’s requirements and consequences. Marla Ucelli, director of district redesign at the Annenberg Institute on School Reform, says that, in the current climate school boards are “under more pressure than ever before.” But, she says, that has created a positive side effect: board members now have more expertise about teaching and learning, school funding and other key issues.

School Board Roles
It is the role of school boards to set policies and oversee the implementation of those policies without micromanaging. Board members see the big picture, set the vision for the district and, as representatives of the community, oversee whether the work of the district office and of schools is effective in carrying out that vision.

One of the most important jobs of school boards is to hire the superintendent, as the person who leads the implementation of district goals. Ucelli, who directs the Annenberg Institute’s School Communities That Work task force, emphasizes the importance of taking the time to define a community and board vision before encouraging or recruiting candidates. Boards, she says, need to hire superintendents who will “operationalize the local vision not paint a new one.”

The board/superintendent relationship can be complicated by the changing structures of boards and school governance. A small, but growing, percentage of urban boards are politically appointed by mayors, and, under state and national accountability systems, new rules are in place for states or other entities to run low-performing school districts.

In this era of standards and accountability, it is the role of school boards to adopt standards, set measures of progress and ensure accountability for making progress. Board decisions about educational programs, then, should align with these standards and accountability measures in ways that support the mission, vision and values of the district.

On the business side of the job, boards approve the annual school district budget and monitor spending throughout the year. Boards have responsibilities for negotiating contracts with teacher unions, other employee groups and contractors, such as food service providers. They also approve plans for construction and renovation of schools and other buildings.

To describe the roles and responsibilities of a school board, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has developed a framework called the “Key Work of School Boards.” According to Joseph Villani, NSBA deputy executive director, the framework “is designed to structure the way the school board members think about their job [in their] role to raise student achievement through community engagement.” The framework contains eight elements: Vision, Standards, Assessment, Accountability, Alignment, Climate, Collaborative Partnerships and Continuous Improvement.

With a steep learning curve, boards often seek out training from state school board associations or national organizations that specialize in school board leadership. Bobbie Regan, a new Portland, OR, school board member and longtime active member of Community & Parents for Public Schools (CPPS), found that involvement in PPS [Parents for Public Schools] was itself training for being a school board member: “It gives parents a solid foundation in the issues,” she says. Charles Olson, school board president in Waco, TX, and a founding member of PPS Waco, adds: “Involvement in PPS gives parents the tools to know how a productive relationship between parents and school boards should work.”

Regan anticipates that, because she was elected mostly by parents, many parents will come to her with their issues. She responds by putting constituents in touch with the people in the district who can help them, which is the same procedure
used by many PPS chapters. When the dual roles of setting policy and serving constituents collide, school board members, like PPS chapters, ought not to take on every individual parent’s issue—like a single ineffective teacher—unless it is indicative of a larger systemic problem.

Regan explains: “I have to keep focused on our district’s core mission and the broader issues of the district, while still doing the constituent services. It won’t do any good if I get distracted by individual issues. People elected me to do what is right for the district.”

Parent Roles
The importance of identifying and working to elect qualified candidates for school board—including public school parents—should not be underestimated. While PPS chapters never endorse specific candidates, they do take steps to ensure that voters know how candidates stand. Several PPS chapters are involved in organizing candidate forums and conducting candidate interviews, often in collaboration with groups like the League of Women Voters, to give the public opportunities to hear candidates’ positions first-hand.

As with any other public official, voters need to stay vigilant in holding school board members accountable for responsible leadership. A sure way to do this is to help educate the community about expectations for board leadership and engage the public in discussion about current and anticipated decisions using the following strategies:

• Organizing “accountability sessions” in which school board members are invited to a meeting of 50 or so parents to discuss current issues and ‘account for’ what they as school board members are doing to address those issues
• Organizing public forums through cable call-in shows and summarizing the results in flyers or newsletters
• Meeting with editorial boards of local newspapers
• Tracking votes of each board member over time and publicizing the trends of who supports what
• Making public evidence of individual board member’s actions to support student, parent, and/or public functions about public education

Organizing parents and other community members to pursue accountability strategies is important for school success. Anne Henderson, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on family-school relations, affiliated with the Institute for Education and Social policy at New York University, explains that research on community organizing shows that “when parents are organized in ways that hold policymakers and school systems accountable, it leads to positive development in schools.”

Critical to holding school board members accountable for their actions is making sure boards conduct their business out in the open. Several PPS chapters have been successful in demanding changes of their boards’ meeting policies.

Though it is important to monitor individual school board members’ actions, it is also important to respect the right of a board to act collectively on wide-reaching decisions. “The school board is the public body we elect to listen to citizens and make decisions on behalf of the community,” says Charles Olson, who wears both PPS and school board hats.

In NSBA’s Key Work framework, school boards are charged with helping to build community consensus for a vision for the local school district. Parent advocates, along with other community groups, are important players in the process to define and carry out a vision. Portland, OR, school board member Bobbie Regan encourages parents to get involved from the start, when newly elected boards are setting goals and agendas. Often boards have several sub-committees that are ideal for parent involvement. “If parents show up at a committee meeting, the chances are good that they’ll be participating in the discussion,” Regan says. She advises the kind of involvement that PPS parents are known for: “Parents need to proactively put themselves in position to be heard. Don’t wait to be asked.”

In Cincinnati, parents found that just by asking, they got a place at the table. There are parent representatives on most of the school board and school district committees, dealing with issues from textbooks and the school calendar, to training for school-based decsionmaking councils and oversight for school reform and budget decisions. When parents asked to be part of these committees, says Ann Lugbill, board member of the Cincinnati PPS chapter, the board and administration were receptive. “No one had ever asked before,” she says. This kind of proactive, constructive communication with district leaders is exactly the kind of culture change that Charles Olson believes is necessary. He believes that not only must school boards “aggressively and proactively seek opportunities to hear from parents…and lower the barriers to allow parents to be part of the process,” but parents must also understand that “they work best as part of a decisionmaking process primarily when they are constructive.”

In the spirit of constructive participation, parents can work with the school board to adopt a thoughtful parent involvement policy, with specific actions expected of schools and of parents. According to Anne Henderson, educational researcher and writer, “this kind of policy provides a framework for parents who want to be involved.” Without the support of a formal and specific school board policy, parents have less leverage to say how they want to be more meaningfully involved, what they need from schools in order to be involved or to seek recourse if that is not provided.

True to the PPS mission of ensuring all schools effectively serve all children, Regan says, “Parents are most helpful to school boards when they are looking at what makes sense for a broader group of children, at what makes sense districtwide, or at the elementary, middle school or high school level—when parents can take a broader perspective than just what is good for my child.”

By taking this broader perspective, parents and school board members are able to bring the voices of disenfranchised families, voices that are not typically heard, to decisions about how the school system is governed.

Joseph Villani of NSBA says that parents not only need to participate in setting the vision, but also to help the school district implement the priorities, which is what happened in Portland early in 2003. When it became clear that neither the state legislature nor the governor would adequately fund local school districts, a small group of advocates, including Regan (before she was elected), worked with the president of the school board and others to get a local tax measure to support public schools and other public services on the ballot. After a successful and broadbased grassroots campaign, in which CPPS participated, the tax increase passed with 57% of the vote.

Not only is it a community’s responsibility to help ensure schools have adequate resources, it is also a primary responsibility of parents and other residents to ask good questions—in the public arena—about how their tax dollars are being spent in schools.

The Annenberg Institute’s School Communities that Work task force advocates student-based budgeting as a way to move toward more equitable, transparent funding formulas. Student-based budgeting is the process of allocating resources directly to schools based on student enrollment and factors that  indicate specific educational needs, such as high-poverty, disabilities and  giftedness.

The complex nature of school funding hides inequities, as Cincinnati PPS found when they helped scrutinize how much money each school was really receiving during the district’s move toward studentbased budgeting. “The first step toward equity is understanding where the money goes,” says Marla Ucelli, director of the Annenberg Institute’s task force. “The most powerful thing parents can do is pay attention and be willing to belabor the obvious.” From her experience in Cincinnati, Lugbill agrees: “We [as parents] can ask for help understanding why things happen. That makes the process more open and can uncover pots of money that aren’t being used. It’s often very helpful to come in with the pure moral viewpoint of whether or not it helps kids.”

Another key role for parents is to invite school board members into schools for substantive discussions about achievement, challenges and successes. As a longtime parent advocate and member of PPS, Lugbill advises parents to “keep the lines of communications open” with board members. Most board members are not paid or paid very little. They are doing this as a community service. It is important for parents to encourage and support them in this very tough job.” Olson adds: “Parents need to say, ‘What can we do to help you, the district, to resolve this issue?,’ not ‘What are you going to do to help us?’”

Donald McAdams of Houston says “it takes a city” to reform a school district, implying that the community is the only constant as school board members and superintendents come and go. Parents and other civic leaders can provide the consistent voices for high expectations for all students and responsible governance of schools to reach those expectations.

Excerpted from Fall 2003 - School Boards: Community Representatives Working on Behalf of All Kids, Parents for Public Schools. (Read the full issue!)