Teamwork makes governance teams work
In sports, it takes a team effort to obtain winning results. Because the future of our children is so important, we want to create winning teams in our school districts and county offices of education.
An example of a successful team approach to a critical issue was recently on display at the inaugural School Wellness Conference. Board members joined with superintendents, chief business officers, food service directors, school nurses, teachers and parents to discuss comprehensive approaches to creating healthier environments in our schools.
This successful event provides a valuable template for a team-oriented approach to other issues, such as the Learn More California campaign, a community engagement effort that CSBA is pursuing in partnership with the Association of California School Administrators. Learn More California will train board members and superintendents to work together—as a team—to spark meaningful dialogue in their local communities about how schools are funded and what they should look like in order to meet the needs of our students. These local conversations will, in turn, help the education community team up with other civic-minded members of the public in preparation for Gov. Schwarzenegger’s “Year of Education” in 2008.
Setting the standards
CSBA offers board members and governance teams many tools and services designed to foster the team approach to critical issues faced by districts and county offices, including its Good Beginnings workshops, Executive Search Services and the Masters in Governance program.
CSBA’s Professional Governance Standards are yet another recommended resource. These standards outline the roles of individual board members and the board itself, as well as the specific jobs that district and county boards perform. Those standards are supplemented by a set of Superintendent Governance Standards that were developed by a team of California superintendents, including members of the CSBA Superintendents Advisory Council and the ACSA Superintendency Council. Including these as part of the adoption of Professional Governance Standards is a perfect way to create and foster a culture of teamwork in your district or county office. But adopting the standards is just the first step; they must be put into practice, and they should be reviewed whenever any member of a governance team changes.
A mutual respect for the roles of superintendents who get results and board members who reward such performance with job stability can result in a winning combination for students, districts and superintendents alike; a study by Waters and Marzano last year found a correlation between improvements in student achievement and a superintendent’s length of time in the district.
As we move forward on CSBA’s agenda for adequate school funding, proposals to give districts and county offices the ability to raise revenues in their local communities will no doubt surface. Knowing that schools need more resources to meet the challenges of closing the achievement gap and meeting the needs of all students is not enough. In exchange for more flexibility in how resources are allocated, local governance teams must be prepared to assume responsibility for tackling some very important decisions, some of which may prove to be very difficult. These important decisions will require a strong team approach. When this happens, the kids will be the winners!