SURVEY: EDUCATION IN 2050
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QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: How do I help my board distinguish between what we're legally required to do, what we've just always done, and whether the superintendent is using the law to limit our oversight? -- Board Member in New York
TESBM: The three items in your question are not the same kind of thing so your first job is to sort fact from fiction. The starting point is the three categories of board work. The board's job falls into three areas: setting and monitoring Goals, setting and monitoring Guardrails, and items that are legally required of the board. That is the full list. Everything else is superintendent work.
You’re asking about the third area: legally required of the board. To get an answer to this question you need to ask your attorney a very specific question: what is the link to the statute that obligates the board to take this action and that prohibits the board from delegating it? All three pieces of that request are mandatory or you can’t be certain of the response you get.
You need the statute itself.
You need to know which things the statute requires of the board explicitly, not just of the district generically.
You need to know which explicit requirements of the board are non-delegable by statute.
In the absence of this clarifying information, here is what often happens. A board member asks whether a routine agenda item is legally required. The superintendent says yes. The board accepts that answer and moves on. The result is a board that believes it is operating under legal constraints when it is actually operating under tradition. Instead, we recommend that the board verify legal requirements against the statute itself, hence the guidance above. If the board does not have legal counsel who can provide a written opinion on which items are legally required, that is worth fixing.
Once you know what is legally required, the useful answer to your question is that everything else is optional. We don’t suggest that you immediately eliminate anything else, only that you make sure you can distinguish fact from fiction, and then choose accordingly. As coaches, we often don’t care what you choose, just that you know you have a choice and make it knowingly and after having weighed each option.
The distinction between board work and superintendent work was designed for exactly this situation. The board defines what belongs to it (Goals and Guardrails) and it follows the law (legally required items). Everything else is delegated. The superintendent operates within the space the board leaves, not within the space the superintendent defines. When the board is clear about its own three categories, it is much harder for anyone to blur the line.
Question: What should I do when a staff member comes to me with concerns that their supervisor is being abusive? -- Board Member in Texas
TESBM: The question is framed as if you are the right person to handle this. You are not.
No one should work in an abusive environment. The staff member who came to you is in distress, and they trusted you enough to share something difficult. That trust matters. But the board member's role in that moment is not to investigate, intervene, or resolve the concern. It is to help the person navigate the system to get to the person who has the authority to address it.
Board work consists of three categories: setting and monitoring Goals, setting and monitoring Guardrails, and legal requirements of the board. Serving as personal problem solver for individual personnel matters isn’t on the list, for several very good reasons. Here is what we recommend you do instead.
First, thank the staff member for coming to you. This is not an endorsement of their claim but an acknowledgment of their trust. "Thank you for trusting me enough to share this. I know it took courage to bring this forward."
Second, listen. Create the experience of being heard. Reflect back what you heard to confirm your understanding.
Third, help them identify the lowest level of the chain of command with the authority to address their concern. For a workplace concern like this, encourage them to follow whatever policies are in the employee handbook. For many, the path likely starts with the supervisor's manager. If that is not appropriate, the next step is often human resources. We recommend asking who they have already spoken with. If they have not spoken with anyone yet, the first step is clear: read the employee handbook for the appropriate policy/process.
Fourth, leave the door open. "If you go through the correct channels and the system does not respond, please come back and let me know. I will support you with getting to the right place."
Here is what often happens instead. A board member hears a concern, agrees to keep it confidential, starts making calls, and inadvertently begins dismantling the very systems they were seated to protect. The superintendent does not know there is a problem, the abusive behavior continues, and the staff member stays in distress. The system learns that politics and political access matters more than fairness and processes.
A school system that depends on board members to resolve individual concerns is not functioning effectively. The superintendent should have systems in place for staff to raise concerns and for those concerns to be addressed fairly and consistently. When those systems are not working, the board's role is not to step in and do the superintendent's job for one person. The board's role is to hold the superintendent accountable for making the systems work for everyone. That happens every time a board member redirects a concern to the proper channel; they strengthen the system for the students those staff members serve. Every time they resolve a concern themselves, they weaken it. The system learns. The only question is what it learns.
Question: I'm the incoming board chair. What additional authority do I have over the board and how do I best use it? -- Board Member in Nebraska
TESBM: The question includes a word that does not belong there. That word is "over." So the other word to hold in your mind is, “none”; board chairs have no power over their boards. That’s not always entirely accurate, but practically speaking, that’s the answer you want to forge into your brain. What you probably mean to ask is what you can do to make the biggest difference for students. Let’s break that down.
Effective boards typically delegate two duties to the chair. The first is to maintain the board's focus on the board's work. The second is to maintain the professionalism and effectiveness of the board's meetings. These two duties are interdependent. A chair who fails at one has likely failed at both. Here’s how not to fail.
First, understand what the board has actually delegated to you. If the board's governing policies do not describe the chair's authority, that is worth fixing. The chair should be able to point to a policy and say "the board has given me the authority to do this."
Second, protect the board's focus. Board work consists of three categories: setting and monitoring Goals, setting and monitoring Guardrails, and legal requirements of the board. Everything else is work that the board has chosen to delegate to the superintendent. At least half of the board's meeting time each month should be spent monitoring progress toward the Goals. The chair who protects that time is doing the job well.
Third, keep meetings professional and effective. Professionalism allows the organization to conduct business. Effectiveness ensures that business is focused on improving student outcomes. A meeting that is professional but not focused on student outcomes has failed.
Fourth, remember that your authority is not the point. The board's ability to function as a body is the point. The chair serves that body. The chair does not rule it.
INTERESTING READS & LISTENS
School boards often go through rough patches, but there are things they can do about it.
A rubric-based approach to evaluating boardsmanship and governance.
Reflections on building relationships between the board and superintendent.
BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS
A subscriber asked us to watch the August meeting of a school board in Illinois. Here are the highlights from the regular board meeting:
Total Minutes: 257
Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 0 (0%)
Key Topics: School Transition Resolution, Network Chiefs Recognition, FY27 Budget Update on Rescinded Layoffs, Teacher Staffing and Vacancy Rate Report, Youth Voter Empowerment Law
What Coach Celebrates:
Sixty of the board's sixty-four agenda segments ran seven minutes or less, showing the board does not habitually get stuck in extended debate on routine matters.
The board devoted time to public speakers on budget, special education, charter funding, and student data privacy, keeping the community's door genuinely open.
What Coach Recommends:
Adopt Student Outcome Goals and place a monitoring block on adopted goals as the first substantive item of every agenda, ahead of updates.
Cap or align recognition and appreciation, and consider eliminating individual member commentary.
Redirect the 53 minutes spent across eight separate arts items to the superintendent, and ask instead which adopted goal or guardrail the transition affects.
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
Effective Member Participation
Ever have a board member who seems to be phoning it in? Maybe they attend regularly, maybe they don’t; maybe they prepare for the board meeting, maybe they don’t; maybe they don’t really serve on any ad hoc committees or attend any additional functions or do school visits? Whatever the case, your students aren’t getting the most bang for their buck out of this board member. It doesn’t have to remain that way. Join us for a conversation about strategies to try regarding how best to leverage the most beneficial skillsets of your entire board.
11am central on Friday, September 11, 2026
Did you miss last month's 30-minute free webinar? Email Greg for a make-up session on any of our growing list of topics, including governance policy, delegation policy, effective budgeting, superintendent evaluation, professional services management, strategic planning, consent agendas, and more.
BONUS MATERIALS
For paid subscribers, here are links to additional resources (to gain access to the links below, please consider subscribing):
Additional details about the analyzed meeting:
Board Meeting Video
Meeting Agenda
Strategic Plan
Time Use Analysis
Guidance documents related to this issue:
Effective Navigator Support
Effective Board Chairmanship
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