Dysfunctional School Boards: Part I

If you ask any teacher in Louisiana who has taught more than ten years what’s the worst thing to happen to the teaching profession, most of them will say Act I; the legislation that defines how teacher are evaluated using invalid student test scores and a Utopian scoring rubric that was designed to be a tool for teacher reflection and not a standard to be judged against.

What the general public doesn’t realize is that in addition to demeaning the teaching profession, Act I also stripped locally elected school boards of most of their power. When you understand the motivation behind these significant changes, you get a better understanding of what is happening in education.

State statute defines local school boards as a political subdivision of the State of Louisiana. The members of local school boards are democratically elected by the citizens of the school districts they represent. The changes made by Act I have limited the ability of individual board members, and the board as a whole, to effectively represent their constituents. Act I essentially reduces the local board to three responsibilities. 1.) Appoint a superintendent. 2.) Approve a budget. 3.) Make policy.

I’ll get more into those responsibilities later, but first I want to talk about why certain entities would want the power of boards limited. Education reform groups, which are largely comprised of subsets of business and industry, believe that local school boards are too political and get in the way of policies that support the wants and needs of business and industry. Their belief is that school districts should be run like corporations, or nonprofits that have a hands-off board of directors that hires an executive to run the organization, and that executive should be a business leader who can run the district like a business. In the business world, the best leaders can lead any organization to profitability without intimate knowledge of specific industry.

Council for a Better Louisiana, American Federation for Children, Stand for Children, and pretty much all nationally recognized education reform organizations have, at sometime or another, published their version of what an “effective school board” should be. All of them strongly resemble the publication put out by the National Chamber of Commerce more than two decades ago. You can see an example of these publications here.

The problem with this approach is that board members of corporations and nonprofits represent only themselves, and their purpose for serving is either financial gain, or to benefit a cause that is special to them. In contrast, locally elected school boards represent people. The efficacy of a corporate board can be measured by concrete results. The efficacy of a nonprofit board is measured by the satisfaction of its beneficiaries. The efficacy of a school board has been reduced to a letter grade, and the board is left with little ability to respond to the wants, needs, and desires of the people who elected them.

Authority of the Local School Board per Act I

1. Appoint a superintendent: The first responsibility of a school board is to appoint a superintendent to lead the district. Act I specifically states that the board “shall select a leader who shall prioritize student achievement and act in the best interests of all students enrolled in schools under the board’s jurisdiction.” This means that the person at the top of the organization chain should possess a vision that provides opportunity for each and every student in the district to succeed. The effective superintendent has operational experience from the ground up, shares their vision with the organization, including the board, and welcomes criticism. It is not effective to delegate a vision to the people beneath you and push back against criticism. A leader should be able to defend their vision.
2. Approve a budget: Act I prohibits school board members from influencing hiring decisions. It gives all hiring and firing power to the superintendent; however, it states that the board “shall determine the number of schools to be opened, the location of school houses, and the number of teachers and other school personnel to be employed.” An effective school board will approve a budget that prioritizes direct classroom expenditures, has minimal overhead expenses, and ensures efficient spending in general expenditures and capital outlay.
3. Set Policy: Though each of these responsibilities carries equal weight, the responsibility to set policy is what defines the boundaries in which a superintendent can operate while implementing a vision that reaches the goals of the board. While it is ideal that regulation is minimal in order to allow a superintendent to lead the district, it is utterly important that the board set boundaries to define what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, in every aspect of the operation. They must set policy that stays within the laws, rules, and policies of the State. What a board must keep in mind is that policies should be implemented with what is best for all students in mind, and the judge of a policy’s effectiveness is rarely the district leadership; but instead, the people who elected them to serve.

In Part II, I’ll get more into what it takes to be an effective school board member for anyone who is currently an elected board member, or is contemplating running for election. I’ll also give my thoughts on why the changes that have been made to school board authority have not improved educational outcomes, and what changes could be made that would likely result in improved outcomes based on research.