SCHOOL BOARD JOB DESCRIPTION

The School Board’s Job

1. Begin with a vision
The vision for the district must be to enhance the opportunity for each child to experience academic success, be challenged to perform at their potential, to develop an acceptable set of values and to be treated with dignity and respect. Students must graduate with the knowledge and skills essential to enter and succeed in continuing formal education or employment.
Advancing the districts vision requires three conditions:
A. The community must redefine the role of the board of education into a governance and
leadership organization.
B. The community and board must exhibit the courage, will and discipline to focus on
student achievement and performance above all else.
C. The board must exhibit the initiative to control and organize the educational agenda.

2. Serve in a trusteeship role
Board members are elected district leaders who have accepted the role of governing in concert with community. Boards of education bear responsibility for the integrity and effectiveness of the districts educational outcomes.
The board must assure that there is community and institutional focus. The board must also become a driving force in assuring appropriate direction, expectations, assessment and accountability in advancing student outcomes.
Board members represent the community. The district administrator is the board’s chief employee and is directly accountable to the board.

3. Fulfill a leadership role
The board must act as a strong and effective community leadership organization.
The board must demonstrate its capacity to provide effective internal leadership to the governance process. Board members must collectively contribute conceptual planning and organizational capacity to the organization. Board members must demonstrate vision, imagination and courage.
Board members can only earn the public’s trust by demonstrating their insight, independent judgement and perseverance in advancing education outcomes.
Board members become credible by interactively communicating with parents, other community and staff and exhibiting a foundation of understanding of their role and responsibilities.

4 Exhibit the capacity to govern
The board must demonstrate its capacity to govern on behalf of the electorate not administration, if it intends to add value to the organization and earn the communities trust and respect. The tenets of effective governance requires that the board regularly clarifies who it represents, the purpose for its existence and a reconfirmation of its duties and responsibilities.
The governing body must epitomize a community of continual learning. Board members must exhibit the capacity to understand the educational process. They must collaborate with staff and community in an endeavor to identify the core knowledge, skills, behaviors, values and perspectives needed by our graduates to succeed and thrive. Board members must develop a foundation of educational perspective from literature spanning historical, contemporary and
futuristic significance if they intend to provide meaningful direction to the district.
Parents no longer are willing to blindly entrust the education of their children to a process without assurance of involvement, responsiveness, expectations, communications and accountability.
Governing bodies must advance their vision for continuous improvements in learner outcomes by review, planning and assessment processes.
The governing body must embrace and nurture a diversity of informed perspective and debate as it advances the planning and decision making process.
Boards govern most effectively though policy review, refinement and development. Policy governance is widely accepted as the major factor in creating operational integrity.
Effective governance requires that boards control their own agenda and engage in annual agenda development with a clear focus on enhancing student outcomes.
Boards should also function within an acceptable framework of operational guidelines.
Boards must engage the public, not retreat from the public if they are to be credible.
The board must remove itself from the subservient position of reacting and ratifying and into the leadership role of defining and delegating.

5. Exemplify a legitimate connection to parents and community
The board encourages open and unrestricted interactive communications between itself and parents, other community and staff on issues of educational concern. The board will exhibit a low tolerance for any violation of this principle.
The board will not support any effort to restrict or refuse citizens the opportunity to participate or serve on district related committees. The board will emphasize that district wide committees have representation which reflects the diversity of our community.
Parents shall always be welcomed and encouraged to visit their children’s schools and classrooms.
The board will be supportive of exploring new ways of involving parents and other community in the educational process.
The governing body, in November, will openly encourage citizens to be informed of opportunities to become board candidates and to be informed of board responsibilities.
The board shall require the publication of detailed meeting agendas which shall be well advertised, televised and reported.
Public attendance will be welcomed and encouraged at board meetings. Informed written or concise verbal community input will be nurtured.
The board shall allow 15 minutes upon adjournment for press questions after each meeting.
The board shall establish a weekly news column with local newspapers to address educationalconcerns.
The board shall establish a minimum of two listening sessions per year with the community to interact on educational concerns.
The board shall establish one meeting per year in each building which shall include interaction with staff.
The board shall establish one meeting per year at the Ho-Chunk Nation to interact with leaders and parents.
Non-confidential board discussion and action materials shall be available to board meeting audiences.

6. Exercise statutory authority
It is imperative that the board exercises its authority to define and differentiate its role from that of administration. State statute 118.24(2) B states that the school district administrator shall not be a member of the school board and shall not engage in any pursuit which interferes with the proper discharge of the duties. Board members should become familiar with the provisions of chapters 118 and 120 of the Wisconsin Statutes.
The board has statutory flexibility to delegate portions of its authority to administration. In fact the board should delegate as many operational and managerial responsibilities to administration as can be agreed upon, so the board can be freed up to act in a governance role. There are four board functions which should never be delegated. They include: assurance of executive performance, policy development, internal and external communications and educational goals
and expectations.
School board members represent parents, students and other community and are authorized to do
all things reasonable and legal to promote the cause of education.

7. Board development activities
Greater expectations are placed upon students, staff and administration each year. The board of education must also be committed to continuous self improvement and accentuated levels of performance in adding value to the organization.
The governance body of the district must be committed to continuous self improvement. Board members should read at least a book per month on school governance or other educational issues.
A board library section should be developed in the high school LMC. Board members should be subscribing to several educational journals and be reviewing educational Web sites.
Board members attending state and national conventions and workshops should be reporting to the public on the cost/benefit relationship the district has gained from their participation. Board members should be encouraged to attend leadership workshops. Attendance at board workshops which do not sabotage or diminish the governance process should be encouraged.
Board members should consider publishing articles and becoming active in state organizations.
Board members should engage their legislative and congressional representatives to advance issues of educational significance.
Board members must become committed to meeting the challenges of a more diverse and educated community which demands a higher level of expectations and responsiveness to student needs.

8. Orientation of prospective board candidates
Prospective board candidates should be afforded the opportunity to become familiar with the concepts of effective governance, board responsibilities and the characteristics of effective schools.
Each year, in October, the board shall openly promote citizen exploration of school board candidacy. In November the board shall present an orientation program to interested applicants that shall include the following topics and documentation:
A. Review of the Board Governance Manual
B. Effective School Boards book presentation and overview to participants.
C. 10 Traits of Highly Effective Schools book presentation and overview to participants.
D. An appendix of applicable Web sites, books, journals and other resources.
E. A copy of Wisconsin School News
F. Election information
The presentation shall be made by board members. The meetings shall be open to the public.

9. Board candidate / new member orientation
In January, the board shall provide orientation for all declared candidates to further prepare them for potential board responsibilities. The training shall be conducted by board members and shall include:
* Campaign laws
* Board ethics
* Applicable statute chapters
* Policy overview
* School performance report
* Student achievement NSBA action areas
* Board development areas
* Board assessment instruments
* Tenets of open meeting law
Newly elected board members shall have their oath of office administered in public at the April board meeting and shall be warmly welcomed to the board.
In April, the board president and administrator my conduct an informational meeting on school statistics and operational detail for newly elected board members.
Informational meetings shall be open to the public.

10. Focus on shared objectives
Sustainable progress in enhancing educational outcomes is most effectively addressed as a continuum of integrated initiatives engaged in over an extended period of years.
Isolated initiatives which address educational reform on a fragmented quick fix basis typically yield disappointing results.
A strategic 5 year plan with annual review and roll over provisions jointly inspired by board and stakeholders can provide the basis for annual board objective development and implementation.
Annual board objectives should be measurable and at a minimum be incrementally attainable. In reality, the term “board objectives” is metaphoric, because these goals must represent a joint commitment from staff, administration, community and board to be attained.
The board adds its credence by engaging and inspiring stakeholders, making final decisions, providing board direction, delegating the implementation process and monitoring outcomes.

11. Agenda formulation and issue addressment
School board policy 171.2 and 171.21 address agenda formulation. At each board meeting board members have the opportunity to identify concerns which they wish to advance to future meeting agendas. In addition, the board president is granted discretionary power to also add agenda items from board members or public to upcoming agendas.
The administrator is provided the autonomy of supplementing the boards agenda with items deemed appropriate and necessary to manage district operations.
To ensure that the key provisions of effective governance are addressed in a systematic and congruent process, the board, in May, shall identify and chronicle the components of its major concerns into an annual agenda subdivided by meeting dates. Two meetings per month are required to accommodate the aggregate district agenda.
To expedite the execution of agenda items, the board must encourage debate based on factual research driven evidence delivered succinctly and advanced to the board in digest form prior to meetings whenever practical.
It is the intention of this board to move beyond a list of agendized activities that are externally inspired and generated. Such activities keep boards engaged but add little value to the district and unintentionally or otherwise have the effect of diluting or sabotaging effective governance.

12. Board activist - advocate role
Board members need to serve as advocates for children and community recognizing that each child and each segment of the community is important.
Board members must be knowledgeable and well informed of educational concerns and issues. The members of the governing body need to embrace a broad base of informed perspective and encourage meaningful interactive communications with all segments of the district.
Board members have a responsibility to serve as activists in identifying issues of significance that impact on the educational outcomes of children and community satisfaction with our schools.
Members of the board of education should model and emulate the attributes we want instilled in our graduates.

13. Assessing board performance
The public insists that students, staff and administration be held to high standards and levels of performance through a vigorous assessment process.
Boards should also be accountable to their constituency and be subjected to an annual assessment of their capacity to function effectively, to demonstrate leadership and add value to the organization.
School board policy 152 identifies the four components of assessment
1. A monthly board meeting survey form
2. District newsletter survey in the “insights”
3. Board self assessment instrument
4. Critique by staff and administration
The assessment process can serve as an important reference point for board improvement just as it is intended to do for students, staff and administration.

14. Assuring administrative accountability
It is the intent of the board to function as an effective governance organization which will exhibit internal leadership in advancing the educational outcomes of children.
The district administrator is the board’s primary employee. A compatible philosophy and understanding between the board and administrator must exist before a district can advance toward its potential for maximizing educational opportunities for children.
The administrator is assigned the general supervision and management of the professional work of the school.
The board has the responsibility of establishing clearly defined expectations for the administrator