QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: How do I explain the difference between Robert's Rules of Order and Lone Star Governance (LSG) [a Texas-specific student outcomes focused approach to school board governance]? -- Coach in Texas
TESBC: Robert's Rules of Order are all about how to manage a meeting in such a way that the minority has a chance to be heard but the majority has a chance to conduct business. Student outcomes focused approaches to school board governance (of which both ESB and LSG are examples) are all about how to focus the time spent during the meeting in such a way that at least 50% of the school board's time is focused on improving student outcomes. RRO is about how to run a meeting; LSG is about what to focus on during a meeting. RRO helps you conduct a professional meeting; LSG helps you conduct an effective meeting.
Question: How do I respond to the argument that nudging boards to get more focused on student outcomes is just a way to deprive school boards of their authority and agency? -- Coach in Texas
TESBC: Our work never violates the principle of the board having full agency to act. Often this work is misunderstood as depriving school boards of their power, but that's not legally even possible. School boards lack the authority to deprive themselves of being accountable for everything happening in the school system. Reducing the agency of the board is also inconsistent with how this work is designed to work. Most of the time, misconceptions of this sort arise from a) people not understanding the function of delegation or b) people not understanding the difference between board agency and board member agency.
When I am accountable for something, I can delegate responsibility for the task to someone else, but I remain 100% accountable for whatever I've delegated. And inherent in the nature of delegation is the authority to undelegate -- either because the delegee has underperformed or just because the board chooses to do so.
Board agency also remains intact across time -- though there are costs. Just because the board made one decision yesterday doesn't prevent it from making the opposite decision tomorrow. This commonly comes up in relation to superintendent evaluation. Even if the board has accepted every single monitoring report for the the past 12 months, that doesn't deprive the board of the authority to still find the superintendent's performance to be unacceptable. There are costs when the board behaves in an inconsistent manner like this -- they risk losing the trust of staff and community and damaging their own chain of delegation -- so as coaches we'd generally recommend against doing so, but at the end of the day, the board retains the agency to make such a decision. Just because we, as coaches, counsel against poor governance behavior doesn't mean boards are deprived of the right to engage in poor governance behavior.
The other misunderstanding people have on this topic is they see boards adopting a policy that clarifies the board's authority OVER board member authority and then say that power has been taken away. Often they're correct that privileges have been taken away, but are incorrect in their conclusion about where they went. When the board asserts its authority, that often feels like board MEMBERS are losing authority -- and often that's the reality. For example, if the board says that board members no longer have district issued credit cards then yes, board members have been stripped of a privilege they'd been given. But the board has that authority. And just because the board uses it, doesn't mean the board is ceding its authority to the superintendent. It usually just means that the board is reasserting that the board has certain authority, not individual board members. (ps: if any of your boards issue credit cards to board members, I VERY STRONGLY recommend you coach them away from the practice)
In short, if anyone tries to make the argument that our work weakens school boards and gets them to hand their power over to superintendents, they've probably fallen into one of these two thinking misunderstandings. Our work affirms rather than undermines board agency.
INTERESTING READS & LISTENS
If you haven't watched this TED Talk about why coaching matters, take a few minutes and do so now.
Rick Maloney proposes 49 questions to ask your school board. It turns out his series is a great primer for becoming a true governance nerd!
BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS
A subscriber asked us to watch the December meeting of a school board in Colorado. Here are the highlights from the Workshop Meeting:
Total Minutes: 90mins
Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 61mins
Key Topics: career/college readiness, math, literacy, community engagement
What Coach Celebrates:
67% of this meeting was focused on student outcomes!!! Always wonderful to see a school board focusing on whether students are learning. This board has been making steady progress.
What Coach Recommends:
Some of the questions were technical or tactical in ways that didn't advance a strategic conversation. In addition, the other December meeting wasn't student outcomes-focused, so in total, the board was at 41% student outcomes focused for the month (which, while not yet 50%, is still radically beyond the national norm of 0%-5%!).
BONUS MATERIALS
For paid subscribers, here are links to additional resources (to gain access to the links below, please consider subscribing):
Additional details about the analyzed meeting:
Coach Notes
Technical vs Tactical vs Strategic
Workshop Video
A guidance document, including a table of motions to use and to ignore, on Effective School Board governance and Robert's Rules of Order.
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