SURVEY: EDUCATION IN 2050
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QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: How can we strengthen board policy review cycles? -- Board Member in Illinois
TESBM: It depends on what you mean by "policy review." Most boards use that term to describe reading through their policy manual and making edits. Random acts of wordsmithing isn’t the kind of review that changes what happens for students. The distinction starts with two different questions your board should ask about every policy it owns.
Policy monitoring asks: is this policy being implemented? For Goals, that is a monthly conversation built around monitoring reports on a monitoring calendar. The board checks data, hears an interpretation, and decides whether progress is on track. For Guardrails, Delegation, and Governing, monitoring is at least an annual affair. In either case, monitoring is about execution. It answers the question "are we doing what we said we would?"
Policy reviewing asks a different question: should this policy still exist? And should the board still own it? Reviewing is not about whether the policy is working. It is about whether the policy is still necessary and whether it belongs to the right party. A policy the board adopted five years ago may no longer reflect the community's priorities. Or it may address something the superintendent should own. Reviewing is the board's chance to catch that.
We recommend a few practices to strengthen your review cycle.
First, select criteria in advance. Decide what will tell you whether a policy is still relevant and still appropriately owned. Is the policy answering one of the four board policy questions -- Goals, Guardrails, Delegation, or Governing? If not, the board should think hard about whether it needs to own it at all.
Second, review each policy at least once per board term. A four-year cycle gives your board time to rotate through every policy it owns. That is not fast. But it is regular enough to keep policies from becoming permanent without ever being questioned.
Third, use the same calendar for reviewing that you use for monitoring. A five year board calendar that schedules both monitoring conversations and review conversations keeps the board from forgetting either side.
The main things to takeaway from this are that 1) the board owns what it adopts, and 2) ownership is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing obligation to monitor whether the policy is being implemented and to review whether it still belongs to the board. Boards that do both well spend their time on what matters. Boards that don’t review effectively end up with a policy manual full of language no one remembers adopting, owned by a board that has forgotten why it is there, in service to a set of priorities that aren’t being evaluated. Students are better served when the adults are clear on what they own and why.
Question: How can we strengthen community partnerships? -- Board Member in Utah
TESBM: Most boards think community partnerships are built through flashy activities: combined events, surveys, town halls, newsletters. What that misses is that the experience of being in partnership with your community -- the feeling of being on the same team -- does not come from any of these. The experience of team is an emergent property of aligned action in the direction of aligned intentions. You cannot manufacture it directly, you can only create the conditions for it to emerge. Here is what that means for your board.
Aligned intentions come first. The board has to decide what it is trying to accomplish and why. That means adopting clear Goals that reflect the community’s vision for what its children should know and be able to do. Not Goals the board thinks the community should want. Goals the community has told the board it wants through a deep and intentional listening campaign. When the board listens before it acts, the community sees its own priorities reflected in the board's work. Aligned intention is the foundation of partnership.
Aligned action comes second. Once the board has set the direction, it has to stay on it. The board monitors progress toward the Goals. It communicates the results. It explains what is working and what is not. The community sees the board not just stating intentions but following through on them. Action that matches intention builds trust. Trust gives rise to shared risk which gives rise to collective possibility.
The critical mistake most often made -- because it’s aligned with politics -- is to behave as if the board's job is to be liked. “If they like us, we’ll partner.” This is foolishness. Being liked leads to fair weather acquaintances, not to lasting partnership. The board's job is to be clear about what it stands for on behalf of the community it serves (aligned intention) and to demonstrate that it is serious about getting there through consistent behavior (aligned action). The experience of partnership comes after both are true.
When the board focuses on alignment instead of outreach, something shifts. The community stops waiting to be told what the board is doing and starts watching what the board is accomplishing. The relationship changes from passive to active. The board and the community are no longer two separate groups with one trying to convince the other. They are one group moving in the same direction. Students benefit when that happens.
Question: We talk about the importance of early childhood programs, but our board conversations don’t always reflect that priority. How can we strengthen governance in this area in a way that aligns with our overall priorities? -- Board Member in Wisconsin
TESBM: The real question is not how to talk more about early childhood at board meetings. The real question is whether the board's governance framework reflects early childhood as a priority. Talking about something is not the same as governing around it.
Does your board have a Goal that specifically addresses early childhood outcomes? Not a resolution that names early childhood as important. A SMART Goal about what students should know or be able to do by the end of a given stage, with a starting point, ending point, starting date, and ending date. If the answer is no, the board's conversations will never reflect its stated priority. The board has no framework to hold itself accountable to. We recommend three steps.
First, adopt a Goal that names the early childhood outcome your board expects to see. For example: by the end of pre-kindergarten, the percentage of students demonstrating readiness in language and literacy as measured by abc instrument will increase from W% on X date to Y% by Z date. That makes early childhood a governance priority, not just a talking point. It is now something the board monitors, not something it discusses when there is time.
Second, ask the superintendent to adopt Interim Goals (and eventually Goal-aligned Initiatives) that the administration can track during the cycle. Early childhood outcomes are often knowable only at the end of a year or longer. The board needs a leading indicator -- something predictive of the outcome that can be measured mid-cycle. That could be kindergarten readiness assessment data, pre-K attendance rates, or family engagement metrics. The superintendent chooses the one that is most predictive and most within the system's influence.
Third, make sure the board's monitoring calendar includes this Goal just like any other Goal. If early childhood is monitored once a year instead of at least four times per year, the message is clear: it is not a real priority. The board should schedule it on the same cadence as its other Goals. The calendar is the physical embodiment of the board's priorities. What gets calendared gets governed.
The board does not need separate structures for early childhood. It needs the same structures applied to early childhood. A Goal, an Interim Goal, and a place on the monitoring calendar. That is how a board turns a stated priority into a governed one. That is how the board's conversations start to match what the board says it values. And that is how the youngest students in the system get the same governance attention their community intends.
INTERESTING READS & LISTENS
More of the debate about elected vs appointed school boards
Thoughts about the impact of contested elections on school boards
Rick Maloney opines on the concepts of responsibility, accountability, and authority as they relate to school board leadership
BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS
A subscriber asked us to watch the January meeting of a school board in Wisconsin. Here are the highlights from the Regular Meeting:
Total Minutes: 60mins
Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 15mins
Key Topics: Goal Monitoring, Staff Recognition, Consent Agenda, Student Report
What Coach Celebrates:
A clearly defined Goal (safety, climate, belonging) was monitored with reference to surveys and data
Inclusion of student voice through student board member report
Public comment included community members referencing student outcomes (middle school performance concerns)
Superintendent framed work around a stated Goal with measurable components (surveys, feedback loops)
What Coach Recommends:
Increase Goal monitoring time to at least 50% of the meeting, as this is the behavior most correlated with improved student outcomes
Shift recognition and celebratory items outside of the main board meeting agenda or significantly compress them
Ensure Goal monitoring includes:
clear metrics
progress vs target
board questioning aligned to strategy and results
Reduce time spent on consent agenda explanations and operational clarifications
Build a predictable monitoring cadence so Goals are reviewed each meeting
Increase the quality and quantity of board member questions during Goal monitoring, ensuring they are strategic, measure-focused, and results-oriented
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 Policy Leadership
Inclusive Decision Making
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