QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: What governance safeguards -- such as quorum requirements, voting procedures, and transparency protocols -- should a board adopt when allowing remote participation and voting by members? -- Board Member in New York
TESBM: Your safeguard framing makes sense but is the secondary concern. Most of what you're listing -- quorum, voting procedures, transparency -- is procedural machinery. And procedural machinery, without clear purpose, can be used to hide the reason the board exists and, in more extreme cases, undermine it. Instead, start with why.
The reason a board meets at all is to do board work: attend to the community’s vision (Goals), the community’s values (Guardrails), and handle legally required items. Every policy about remote participation should be tested against a simple question: does this protect the board's ability to deliberate and do board work? Attendance and deliberation are two very different things. A member can be present on a screen and still be absent from the conversation. So the safeguards that matter most aren't the ones that count bodies, they're the ones that protect and enhance the quality of deliberation. We recommend clear rules on when cameras stay on, how members are recognized, and how the public follows a vote in real time. Board members often don’t like hearing this, but remote participation often reduces deliberative quality even when everyone follows the rules. State laws define what’s required and what’s allowable. Working within that framework, your policies should name what works and what doesn’t work for the board to do board work.
Question: How should a board design a monitoring calendar and public reporting policy that tracks progress toward the strategic plan without requiring the board to approve operational details? -- Board Member in New Jersey
TESBM: Oddly enough, the school board doesn't want a calendar that tracks the strategic plan. Most strategic plans are a list of things the administration hopes it will do and strategies it intends to implement. What you want is a calendar that monitors the community’s vision and values (Goals and Guardrails), not the staff’s hopes and intentions (strategic plans). Those are two very different things.
A strategic plan is largely a description of the superintendent's chosen inputs -- programs, initiatives, etc. When a board builds its calendar around that, it accepts information about what adults are doing instead of information about whether students are learning. This is the largest failure of most school boards: focusing on adult inputs to the exclusion of focusing on student outcomes. Boards aren’t trying to fail children, they just mistake adult inputs for student outcomes.
But when the board builds the calendar primarily around its Goals and secondarily its Guardrails, it stays focused on what students know and can do at the end of the cycle. Design the calendar backward from monitoring each of your adopted Goals at least four times per year. First, assign each Goal and Guardrail a scheduled monitoring date across the year. Second, require the superintendent to bring evidence of progress against the interim targets already adopted for that Goal. Third, protect enough public meeting time — we recommend roughly 50% — for the board to actively evaluate that evidence, not just receive it. Your New Jersey annual public report then becomes a summary of that ongoing work, not a separate exercise. As tough as it might be to swallow, if the report describes activities rather than measured student progress, the board is reporting on the wrong things.
Question: How do you know if a draft Guardrail is too vague or too specific, too broad or too narrow? -- Board Member in Texas
TESBM: Before you ask about the policy's language, ask about the community’s value. Most boards start writing Guardrails too early. They try to get the words right before they get clear about what value they’re trying to protect. Vagueness and overspecificity both come from the same root: the board hasn’t isolated the community value.
As an example, if safety is the value, "The superintendent will not allow an unsafe environment" is too vague. Everyone has a different opinion about what “safe” and “environment” means so the statement doesn’t clarify. Is the intention physical safety? Safety from other students or safety from strangers? The lunchroom environment or the classroom environment?
You can also overshoot. "The superintendent shall not allow bullying in hallways, cafeterias, or playgrounds without issuing a written warning to the offending student within 24 hours, copying the parents, and scheduling a restorative circle within 72 hours" is slightly too specific. It tells the superintendent when, where, and how to respond. It removes professional judgment. It is a directive disguised as a Guardrail.
Here is the process we recommend.
First, isolate the value to one word. Getting a stop sign is not a value. It is an issue. Push on it: why does a stop sign matter? Because children on the block are not safe. Safety is the value. Start there. Write down the one-word value before you write any Guardrail language.
Second, write the Guardrail as a prohibition. The superintendent shall not do something. That something is whatever would violate the value. If you cannot write it as a prohibition starting with "The superintendent will not," you probably aren’t clear about the value and you probably haven’t written a Guardrail. You have written a directive, a Goal, or a value statement that belongs somewhere else.
Third, apply the “any reasonable interpretation” test. A Guardrail is too vague when any superintendent action could be interpreted as compliant. A Guardrail is too specific when it leaves only a few options for how the superintendent does their job.
The test is always the same. Can a reasonable superintendent read the Guardrail and know whether their action would violate the community value? If yes, it is specific enough. If they could always be in compliance no matter what they do, it is too vague. If they can’t act without checking with the board first, it is too specific.
Question: "The board speaks with one voice." I interpret that to mean majority rules — once we decide, we stand by it. A colleague interprets it as the president being the spokesperson. Which is correct? -- Board Member in Colorado
TESBM: Who gets to decide what a board policy means? That is the real question underneath your disagreement. Both interpretations sound reasonable, and that’s the issue. If reasonable people can read the same policy and completely disagree on what it means, the problem isn’t the people, it’s the policy. The language is not clear enough to produce a single interpretation.
For this reason, policy is interpreted by its apex officer. The apex officer on the administrative side is the superintendent. The apex officer on the governance side is the board chair.
When the board stops being explicit with its policy, it is explicitly delegating authority for interpreting what remains to the apex officer for that policy. For Goals and Guardrails, the superintendent is the apex officer. The superintendent gets to decide what a reasonable interpretation looks like. For Governing and Delegation policies — the board's own conduct policies — the chair is the apex officer. The chair gets to decide what a reasonable interpretation looks like. When it convenes again, the school board can change the policy. But until the board takes action as a full body, the apex officer’s interpretation is final unless the law says otherwise.
The policy about "the board speaks with one voice" is a Governing policy. It governs how the board conducts itself. So the chair is the apex officer here.
In these situations, we recommend your board do three things.
First, accept that the chair interprets this policy until the board changes the language. If one board member believes the chair's interpretation is wrong, that member brings the question back to the full board for a policy revision — not for an override of the chair's judgment.
Second, if the board wants a consistent meaning, modify the policy language until it produces one. "The board speaks with one voice" sounds specific but it isn’t. Write what you actually mean: whether that is "majority decisions are final and all members support them publicly" or "the chair is the sole spokesperson for the board" or something else entirely.
Third, stop trying to agree on what someone else's vague words mean. That is a debate that never ends. Instead, write your own words clearly enough that the apex officer can apply them and move on.
Students are better served when board conflict is about student outcomes, not about the meaning and wordsmithing of a sentence the board wrote itself.
INTERESTING READS & LISTENS
Reflections on the importance of effective school boards
Thoughts about education policy in the age of technological intelligence
Should your next superintendent be an external or internal hire?
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
Effective AI Policy
Join us next month for a conversation about nurting biological intelligence in the age of technological intelligence. This topic has been requested for quite a while now so we look forward to the conversation.
11am central on Friday, November 13, 2026 (skipping Oct; too busy)
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):
Guidance documents related to this issue:
Effective Goal and Guardrail Setting
Effective Policy Leadership
Question we can answer? Submit it to our coaches
Want a school board meeting analyzed? Send us the video.
Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe to the newsletter.
Enjoying? Forward this to regional / state / national colleagues