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Policy Governance: A New Model for School District Accountability
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 CEO 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 Vermont School Boards Association has recently begun promoting 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.
What follows is an introduction to the principles of Policy Governance from the chair of the Northfield School Board, whose district chose to implement PG this past year. To learn more about PG contact Winton Goodrich at the VSBA (223-3580), or watch for more PG discussion forthcoming in this newsletter.
One of my personal and long-standing frustrations with school board work revolves around the tension between my desire to ensure improved academic results for our students and the pressure I feel to decide how exactly we will achieve those results. Though the desire for results and the pressure to create a method to reach the results may not appear to be mutually exclusive, the common practice of most school boards tells another story, a story perhaps best illustrated with a parable.
Once upon a time there was a good and wise king who wanted, more than anything else, to give the very best to the people of his kingdom. One day he called his favorite squire to the castle and asked him to plant a large patch of pumpkins because the people wanted them for pies.
The squire was known throughout the kingdom as an accomplished farmer who could grow anything. The king, even though he himself wasn’t a very good gardener, told the squire exactly how he wanted the seeds planted and how they were to be weeded, watered, and tended. He told the squire how and when to fertilize and he even circled a date on the kingdom calendar when the pumpkins should be harvested. The king happily left the squire to do his work with a reminder that he would visit the patch at the end of the season to admire the pumpkins before they were picked.
Months went by and the squire did exactly as the king asked. Finally, the day came for the king’s special visit. The king had been eagerly awaiting this day for many months, but sadly when he arrived at the patch hoping to find golden pumpkins all ready for harvest he was terribly disappointed. Not only were the pumpkins too few, none of them were ready for harvest! Knowing that the squire was a master gardener the king asked in disbelief, "What happened?"
The dutiful squire explained that while the king’s instructions were perfectly good for some crops and in some places, they did not work for growing pumpkins in the north end of the kingdom. The squire had known all along that the king’s method for growing pumpkins would not work, but he did not dare disobey the king. If only the king, after finding out that the people wanted pumpkins, had simply told the squire what he wanted and how much he could spend" and then let the squire do what he did best "there would have been plenty of large, ripe, golden pumpkins for pie. The king learned his lesson and vowed never to make that mistake again.
Traditional school board practice is very much like our parable of the pumpkins. Boards often find themselves telling their administrators how to do their jobs instead of simply telling them what the community wants and how much they can spend. As a consequence of this ineffective practice, too much time is spent discussing and working on things that neither reach the desired results nor involve the community in meaningful dialog.
To remedy this problem and refocus our board’s attention on the results that matter most to our community, the Northfield School Board, during the month of June, has adopted a new decision-making style called Policy Governance.
Under Policy Governance, the Board adopts a broad set of results-oriented policies or "Ends" as we call them. Ends are based on the community’s values about (1) the purpose of our schools, (2) who should benefit from our schools, and (3) how much our schools should cost. The Board learns about the community’s values in these three areas by scheduling meetings with various community groups, holding public discussions, and gathering input at regular board meetings.
With a better understanding of what the community wants, the Board is ready to hold the Superintendent accountable for achieving the results that support the community’s values. The Superintendent must achieve the results within the boundaries or limitations set by the Board.
The School Board’s new policies will define four decision-making areas:
