Air Time, Monitoring Participation, & School Board School

Start by asking yourself a different question. What is the dominating member communicating? Disruption is either a "please" or a "thank you." A "please" means the member is trying to be heard on something they believe is being ignored. A "thank you" means they have already checked out and are performing for an audience. The chair needs to know which one it is before they can respond effectively.

When a coach has ideas about how to manage a dominating board member and they bring those ideas to the chair, the chair nods, agrees, and does nothing. The result is that the coach has done their job and nothing changes. The chair was not ready to lead the room, and the coach's ideas did not make them ready. Instead, work with the chair on their capacity to lead the room, not on specific scripts for managing one member. The chair's job is to maintain the professionalism and effectiveness of the board's meetings. That means calling on members, limiting or redirecting off-topic comments back to the agenda item, and tabling items that need more information. This is not authoritarian. It is a respectful use of the board's limited time.

The chair holds explicit authority to manage the conversation. The question is whether they are willing to use it. If the chair is not willing to redirect the dominating member, the problem is not about the dominating member. It is about the chair. In these moments, explicit roleplaying with the chair immediately prior to board meetings might help bolster their willingness to step into their role.

Remind that chair that a parallel process is at work here. The room tends to escalate or de-escalate in step with how the chair and other members handle it. An arguing or grandstanding member teaches the audience that the board is not in control. A chair who redirects firmly and fairly teaches the audience that the board is focused on its work.

If the behavior is measurably harming the board’s ability to be professional (get work done) or effective (focus on student outcomes) and the issue has continued and no one has mentioned it or taken action to address it, it may require a board member other than the chair to step up. To help nudge that forward, start with having the full board complete a time use evaluation.

First, the board chair and the superintendent need to have (another) 1-on-1 where this is the only topic on the agenda. If necessary, bring the vice chair. Ideally, don’t bring the coach (but it’s a great idea for the coach to do a prep session with the chair in advance).

Next, make sure that the board is asking strategic questions, not technical or tactical questions. Superintendents should be treated like the chief strategist, but not the chief tactician or technician. It’s likely a red flag if the superintendent knows every tactical and technical detail. Often boards begin asking technical and tactical questions during monitoring which requires the superintendent to defer to their staff technicians and tacticians.

Those first two steps aside, the board can modify its delegation policy to stipulate that the superintendent presents monitoring reports in person.

The board can table any monitoring report presented by staff until the superintendent is present.

The board can vote not to accept the monitoring reports which, since monitoring is a formative assessment of the superintendent and annual superintendent evaluation should largely just be an amalgam of the monthly evaluation, creates a strong incentive for the superintendent to step up.

Avoid the temptation to include operational topics (info about transportation, food service, bonds, facilities, etc) and statutory topics (open meeting laws, sunshine laws, conflict of interest laws, etc). All of that is important but can be done later. The single most important information to convey is about being student outcomes focused. The more candidates focus on what students should know and be able to do during their campaigns, the more likely they are to focus on those things once they are in office.

The best case scenario is for school board members (who aren’t up for election) to lead the training. But it’s common that they don’t always feel ready. Our job is to get them ready. We often take an I do/we do/you do approach so that they’ve seen what effectiveness looks like in advance and have had a chance to get in some reps.

It’s often beneficial to include community partners in the organizing of and communicating about the training. Reaching out to education leaders, neighborhood leaders, faith leaders, business leaders, other electeds, candidate forum organizers, and more — whichever grasstops influences make sense in your context — often serves to bolster both the credibility and turnout for these events.

This needs to be normalized asap. It should be on the board’s governance calendar every year for the full length of the governance calendar (ideally five years out if it includes the monitoring calendar as well).

Create a list of recommended readings that are available in one location online that all participants can access.

Accessibility is important. Key resources to consider providing include transportation support (often in the form of vouchers for buses or rideshares), food service (anything from continental breakfast to light snacks to full meals), language services (translation of materials and interpretation of the workshop), and childcare.

Create a list of non-obvious questions about effective school boards that are answered at your training. Provide those questions and examples of strong responses to organizers of candidate forums to help them upgrade the rigor and focus of their forums.

A podcast about 4DX

Another podcast about 4DX

Sixty of the board's sixty-four agenda segments ran seven minutes or less, showing the board does not habitually get stuck in extended debate on routine matters.

The board devoted time to public speakers on budget, special education, charter funding, and student data privacy, keeping the community's door genuinely open.

Adopt Student Outcome Goals and place a monitoring block on adopted goals as the first substantive item of every agenda, ahead of updates.

Cap or align recognition and appreciation, and consider eliminating individual member commentary.

Redirect the 53 minutes spent across eight separate arts items to the superintendent, and ask instead which adopted goal or guardrail the transition affects.