QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: After the election, we have mostly new board members. How do you onboard new board members? -- Board Member in Texas
TESBM: First, don't wait for people to join the board to train them. Preboarding beats onboarding: the more training you provide to community members before they're candidates, and candidates before they're seated, the better.
After that, the most important topics to cover are about what school boards can do to support improvements in student outcomes. This includes items like goal setting and monitoring, superintendent evaluation based on the Goals and Guardrails, and the school system's plan to accomplish the Goals.
Only after those topics are sufficiently covered does it make sense to move on to other topics that are less urgent but that, somehow, in most places receive all of the attention. This initially includes resource alignment topics such as the budget and the Goals, board time use evaluations, and then later includes other miscellaneous trainings such as open meetings, ethics, Robert's Rules, and so on. These are important topics; they just aren't more important than student learning.
Question: How do we know if we're making progress toward our goals? The superintendent says we are, but how do we really know? -- Board Member in Wisconsin
TESBM: Thank you for your question; it's at the heart of what effective school boards do differently from ineffective ones. The first step to knowing if the school system is progressing toward the Goals is to ensure they are SMART -- specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, and time-bound -- and focused on student outcomes -- what students are learning rather than what adults are doing. Unfortunately, most school boards haven't adopted Goals at all or if they have, they're both not SMART and not actually about what students know or are able to do. They are most commonly about what the adults are doing. But knowing what the adults are doing doesn't actually tell you if students have learned.
The second step to knowing if the school system is progressing is to monitor progress toward the Goals. This means having a calendar for when the school board will receive monitoring reports from the superintendent and exactly which data -- which aspects of the Goals -- will be monitored that month. And it means actually investing 50% or more of the school board's time each month into monitoring progress towards Goals.
It will likely take the superintendent a while to provide meaningful monitoring reports, and the school board time to become proficient with asking effective monitoring questions. But the more the superintendent and board practice this, the greater the likelihood that school board members will actually know whether or not progress is being made.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
In the last newsletter, we shared about a school board member being accused of leaking student IEP data to the public and an effort to have the board member removed under state law. You all were divided between people who thought they should be censured but not removed and people who agreed they should be removed. We don't have an opinion on that question since it is entirely at board discretion, but we do recommend 1) that the school board has a process for determining whether or not board members are following policy, 2) that it includes what to do if board members are not following policy, and 3) that the school board follows that process.
In this district, the school board is considering a proposal to cut all sports to address their financial shortfall. Would you support this? Why or why not? Go here to share what you would do in this situation. In the next newsletter, we'll share your responses and our coaches' thoughts.
INTERESTING READS
One way for the school board to feel confident that students are meeting literacy expectations? That they are publishing their own book!
School board members reflect on post-COVID insights from the school board perspective.
SCHOOL BOARD EVALUATION
A subscriber asked us to watch a board meeting in Pennsylvania. Here are the highlights from the committee meetings:
Total Minutes: 126
Key Topics: instruction & student services, personnel & policy, finance & operations
What Coach Celebrates: This was a very disciplined, structured, and organized series of three committee meetings followed by a committee of the whole (they do this meeting of their committees early each month, and then have a board meeting later each month) that included the full board all the way through.
What Coach Recommends: The monthly business meeting tends to be a repeat of the committee meetings. Given that no time was spent focused on monitoring progress relative to board-adopted Goals, it appears that either the monthly committee meeting or the monthly board meeting could be repurposed for Goal monitoring.
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
What Is The Board's Role In Strategic Planning?
We are hosting a 30-minute webinar on the elements of a strategic plan, which elements belong to whom, who implements, and how to monitor.
11am central on Friday, June 6th, 2025
Did you miss last month's 30-minute webinar? Email Greg for a make-up session.
We are considering conducting a national school board member survey. If you could ask any question of school board members nationwide, what would you ask and why?
Interested in attending the ESB 2-day school board transformation workshop with other school board members in your region? We are scheduling workshop locations for the second half of the year and are considering requests from interested school boards. Contact us for more details.
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
Workshop Video
Time Use Analysis
Guidance documents related to this issue:
Superintendent transitions
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