VSBA Hires Additional Field Consultant
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Several months ago, the VSBA hired Laura Soares to work with
the associate director, Winton Goodrich, to provide additional consulting and
field services to school districts around the state. Laura has extensive experience in board
operations and management issues.
Laura’s preparation for field services comes from her 15 years of
experience as local board member and chair in the Randolph School
District. Laura has also served on the
VSBA board of directors including a stint as our association president. She currently serves on the Legislative
Council on Governance and the Vermont Education Leadership Collaborative. Laura has also served as both a board member
and as executive director of the Vermont Education Leadership Alliance. Before moving to Vermont, she spent a few
years as a special education and elementary school teacher in Texas.
Soares first joined her local school board when her children
were young students, eventually becoming chair of the Randolph elementary
board. Now she is chair of her local
supervisory union (SU) board, where she continues to work with the
superintendent, Brent Kay, to greatly expand the responsibilities and duties of
the SU board. Laura explained that some
years ago, the SU board met infrequently and for just a few minutes. Since Brent was hired, the SU board has
focused on creating a cohesive supervisory union structure where common
elements are decided at the SU level.
These elements include curriculum, assessment results, and common
policies. The Orange Southwest SU is
currently implementing the policy governance model, wherein the SU board
decides the expectations they have for the superintendent and the school
districts.
Soares lives in Randolph with her husband, Chris, an
ophthalmologist. She has three children,
all of whom attended their local public schools. Her two sons are now attending college and
her daughter is a junior at Randolph UHS.
What follows is an introduction to several of the consultancy
services available to your board that Laura, Winton and/or our other VSBA
consultants can provide:
Superintendent Evaluation
This new tool is now included as a follow-up to the VSBA
Superintendent Search service.
Alternatively, any board that is seeking to objectively and accurately
judge the quality of their executive could benefit from using this resource. The evaluation process begins with an
identification of specific goals and expectations for the superintendent. It then proceeds with a system for assessing
the success or challenges the superintendent has in achieving these
expectations.
Board Standards Workshop
Is your board operating as effectively as possible? Does the board have a clear vision for your
district that allows for efficient structure and accountability in the
school? This workshop shows how adopting
a clear set of standards for your board will result in a smoother, systematic
board process that is focused on student learning. The standards support the work of boards by
clearly outlining roles and responsibilities within the district, and they
encourage board members to engage in discussions that lead to greater board effectiveness. The five standards that each board must
define are vision, structure, accountability, advocacy, and conduct and
ethics.
Support in the Policy Arena
Is your board concerned that, due to the tangled web of
federal and state policies and regulations, your district may not have all its
policies up to snuff? VSBA consultants
like Laura are available to assist your district to review the policies that
are in place for effectiveness and legality.
We can also help your board review and evaluate new policies that may be
beneficial for the district.
Policy Governance
One of the most difficult, recurring concerns for school
boards everywhere is how to improve and maximize the relationship between the
board and district administration, especially the superintendent. There are
numerous opportunities during the course of a school year where a board and its
superintendent may disagree or hold differing visions for their district.
Accountability and leadership can be obscured or even lost when clear roles and
responsibilities are ill defined or disputed. The school community suffers.
To help avoid these unfortunate circumstances, the VSBA has
been supporting the exploration of Policy Governance (PG), a specific system of
accountability between the superintendent and the board, designed to avoid
leadership conflicts. We have assembled an excellent PG facilitator team
willing to assist individual districts in assessing whether their district
would be a good match for the PG system, and helping to implement it if
appropriate. VSBA associate director
Winton Goodrich often remarks, “Policy governance is leadership from 50,000
feet above the ground with laser-guided accountability.” In other words, the board relaxes its
month-to-month or day-to-day management of the district, and instead asks the
superintendent to operate the district with very specific outcomes and
expectations in mind.
Laura is currently working
with three boards that have agreed to adopt policy governance, and are in various stages of implementation. They are the Northfield and Hartford
district, and Laura’s own Orange Southwest SU.
The Chittenden Central supervisory union policy committee is currently
undergoing an overview of the process before deciding whether to commit to
implementation. In Laura’s opinion,
policy governance may not be right for all districts, but every Vermont board
could benefit from learning about the model’s principles and advantages. Cohesive supervisory unions, or SUs that
desire greater cohesiveness, are probably better suited to implement PG.
Governance Studies
The VSBA has taken an active
role assisting districts that want to look at their governance structure, and
consider possible changes to that structure.
A definition of school governance is, “the relationship between school
district voters, school boards, school administrators, and the legislative and
executive branches of state government.
It means the assignment of roles and responsibilities within the district
to each of those entities, and the organizational structure created to allow
each entity to carry out its responsibilities.”
Districts may be interested
in creating informal or formal relationships between neighboring districts,
including sharing staff, programs and co-curricular offerings. Governance studies could also lead to the
creation of joint or union school districts, or a consideration of closing
schools and allowing parents to tuition their children to other districts. With this service, the VSBA assists districts
to research a comprehensive range of options available to the district. This includes a quantitative analysis of the
district’s long-range enrollment, and an evaluation of the availability of
nearby districts to engage in collaborative efforts.
Call the VSBA (800-244-8722)
for more information on any of these services.