By John Nelson, Executive Director
Editor’s Note: The VSBA Board of Directors has approved for
discussion a draft proposal for significant changes to the statutory assignment
of duties to supervisory unions, school administrators and school boards.
Please read the following article for a review of the rationale for issuing
governance proposals now, a brief overview of the draft’s proposals and
directions on how to see and comment on the draft in its entirety.
Every
state and national report on school governance reform in the last twenty years
has stressed the importance of clarifying the responsibilities of school boards
and administrators as part of any school governance re-structuring. In 1998, for example, the Vermont State Board
of Education made school governance recommendations to the General Assembly.
After discussing various structural changes that might be made to the Vermont
education governance system, the Board recommended an emphasis on
board/administrator roles.
Based on our research and consultation with
interested parties, we continue to believe that the emphasis on governance
reform at this time should be on redefining and clarifying the roles and
responsibilities of administrative and leadership positions within the public
education system. We believe, in fact,
that the solution to problems of local school governance highlighted in the
many reports on the subject is found not so much in answering the question “How
many should we have?” as in the answer to the question “What should they be
doing?”
The
VSBA has recognized the need to address the problem of role-confusion by
adopting two resolutions on school board roles. The first VSBA resolution on
the “Role of School Boards” identifies the five key areas of school board
responsibility:
The
second VSBA resolution on board roles more directly addresses the
role-confusion problem:
The Vermont Legislature should review and revise
existing statutory roles prescribed for school boards, superintendents and
principals. Overlapping duties should be
reviewed and simplified, if possible. Duties that are time-consuming but not
essential to core board duties—define vision, establish structure, provide for
accountability, and advocate for students and public schools in an ethical
manner—should be optional. School boards
should be permitted by law to delegate duties as they see fit to
administrators, subcommittees and other panels that are accountable to school
boards.
Despite the many
calls for progress in this area, little has been made. In Vermont, recommendations that the
controlling statutory assignments of authority to voters, school boards and
administrators be reviewed and revised have never been pursued. While it is easy to generalize about “policy”
functions and “management” functions, it is difficult to get consensus on where
the fine lines separating the two should be drawn.
More recently,
legislators and others have also begun to question the viability of supervisory
unions as they are currently structured. Clearly, today’s supervisory unions
dramatically differ in size and function from the S.U.’s originally conceived
in the early 1900’s. Today’s S.U.’s
generally play significant roles in the administration of programs, such as
special and compensatory education, that did not exist when the supervisory
union structure was designed. The
following issues related to supervisory unions are increasingly being
identified as in need of review:
These issues are
already being “piecemealed” through legislative proposals to “fix” one problem
(the S.U. budget adoption process) without understanding the S.U. system as a
whole. The possibility that changes to
the S.U. system will be implemented in a
haphazard manner makes it more important than ever for the VSBA to follow through
on its stated goals for S.U. reorganization.
Doing so will assure that any changes in S.U. functions or structure are
consistent with our goals and interests.
The VSBA Board
of Directors has approved for discussion a draft of revisions to the statutes
that govern the roles and responsibilities of supervisory unions, superintendents,
principals and school district boards.
The Board views the draft as a place to start. It is narrowly focused on the roles and
responsibilities issues addressed by our resolutions. The draft does not include proposals for
statutory changes in supervisory union structures—budget adoption, board
representation, etc. Nor does it address
changes to many other sections of Title 16 that assign various responsibilities
to administrators and school boards.
To review the
draft in its entirety, visit this link.
In brief, the
draft includes the following significant provisions.
1. The supervisory
union board duties in 16 V.S.A. §261a (the provision to member district of
special education, transportation, financial management, for example) that are
now optional would be mandatory for all supervisory unions.
2. Superintendents
would be empowered to employ and dismiss persons who work for supervisory
unions.
3. School district
boards would hire and dismiss principals, and principals would hire and dismiss
teachers and others who work within their schools.
4. Superintendents would evaluate the work of
principals and would make recommendations to school district boards when the
boards make principal employment decisions.
5. The
quasi-judicial functions of school district boards would be referred to hearing
officers retained and assigned by the Commissioner of Education.
Clearly, the
adoption of these and the other changes in the draft as approved for discussion
by the VSBA Board would dramatically alter the relationship between supervisory
unions and member school districts by giving S.U.’s more responsibility over
the delivery of services and coordination of educational programs within
supervisory unions. On the other hand,
school district boards and principals would focus more on local objectives and
accountability.
The VSBA Board
is eager to hear from school board members who wish to comment on the draft
proposals. Your comments may be posted
at the bottom of this link.
If you have questions
or comments about the draft that you would like to discuss with me, feel free
to call me at 1-800-244-8722 or 1-802-223-3580.