No Confidence, Curriculum Access, & Superintendent Contracts

The Effective School Board Member

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

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• Question: How do we handle the union passing a vote of no confidence in our superintendent?    -- Board Members in Wisconsin and California

• TESBM: Treat it as input, not as the outcome. Popularity isn’t the board’s metric for the superintendent -- progress on the board-adopted student outcome Goals and adherence to board-adopted Guardrails is. Your response should accomplish two things:

  • Create for your union leaders/members the experience of being heard. They deserve to be heard. Host board-led listening focused on the community’s vision and values, with a two-way information flow. Listen more than you talk; harvest themes. Route campus/program-level concerns to administration; keep board-level concerns with the board.

  • Remain insistent on evaluating the superintendent on the Goals and Guardrails. In the next monitoring session, continue to focus the conversation on whether progress was made toward the Goals, and to what extent the Guardrails were honored. If the Goals for what students should be learning are being met while the community's values in the Guardrails are being honored, then students deserve stability of progress. This needs to be a data decision, not only a feelings / political decision.

• Ignoring a vote of no confidence is inappropriate. Members of your staff are communicating and need to know that they've been heard. At the next board meeting, the board chair can acknowledge the union's vote and thank staff for engaging. Commit to listening sessions focused on community vision/values (not operational grievances). But simultaneously restate the superintendent evaluation criteria: 1) are children learning (Goals) and 2) whether the community's values are being honored (Guardrails).

• A wise superintendent doesn’t get publicly defensive in these types of situations; they’d treat this as valuable input as well. They might even include, in the next monitoring report, how they’re responding to the feedback while still advancing the Goals. These are challenging situations that deserve serious attention, but the key is to listen generously but decide rigorously. Don’t swap out student results for adult sentiment as your north star.

• Question: A parent asked to see the curriculum that we're teaching. How do you recommend we handle that?   -- Board Members in California and Michigan

• TESBM: This is staff work, not board work, so as a board member, help the parent navigate to the appropriate staff who can honor the request, then step out of it. What that looks like for the parent varies based on the details (is it all digital, all paper, a blend, are there items that require in-person viewing, etc). But two underlying principles remain the same: 1) it is inappropriate for parents to not be given access to details about what you are teaching their children, and 2) this is service work that the staff is responsible for, not individual board members.

• Question: You keep mentioning coaches. We already have access to consultants and trainers. What's the difference?    -- Board Member in Ohio

• TESBM: Trainers tell you what you should do and then go away. Consultants do a task for you and then go away. Coaches advise on what you should do -- but don't tell you what to do -- and then support you throughout the process while you do the work. This distinction is particularly important for elected boards and boards that are appointed by elected officials since the whole point of representation is that the board -- not trainers, not consultants -- are doing the work to represent the vision and values of the community.

• For example, when we encourage school boards to conduct a listening campaign prior to setting their Goals and Guardrails, it's because the board members themselves -- not consultants or trainers or even staff members -- need to hear from the communities they represent. As coaches, we are trained to not get between community representatives and those they represent; our certification depends on us coaching our clients on how to do the work, but never doing their work for them.

• Another significant distinction is that consultants and trainers are short term; once their tasks or workshops are done, you may not see them again. As coaches, we are here for the long term. If your "coach" isn't meeting with you at least monthly over the length of one or two year engagements, it might be an extended consultancy, but it's not coaching. In the same way that one-off sessions with consultants or isolated sit-and-get sessions with trainers are unlikely to change adult behavior for teachers or principals in the classroom, they're equally unlikely to make a difference in the boardroom; it most often takes that plus coaching to support implementation. 

• Every teacher who wants to improve should have access to a coach. Every principal who wants to improve should have access to a coach. Every superintendent who wants to improve should have access to a coach. Every school board that wants to improve should have access to a coach.

• Question: Do you have a sample superintendent contract I can look at?    -- Board Members in Oklahoma and North Carolina

• TESBM: No, but we do identify key ideas that should be included in a superintendent contract for it to support a school board's focus on student outcomes. Clauses that should be part of a superintendent contract include:

  • Evaluation: based solely on Goals (the community's vision, made SMART, for what students should know and be able to do) and Guardrails (the community's non-negotiable values that must be honored while in pursuit of the Goals)

  • Termination: based solely on non-performance of Goals or Guardrails, or on illegal/unethical/immoral behavior

  • Professional Development: pay for them to have a coach who is proficient with Goals and Guardrails, and for them to have an annual 360 evaluation

  • Bonus: if done, based solely on significantly exceeding -- not merely achieving -- the Goals

• You're probably noticing a theme here. In short, in every way that the contract can reinforce a focus on the Goals for student outcomes, we encourage boards to do so.

INTERESTING READS

• Rick Maloney dives into what it truly means for a school board to behave in a transparent manner.

• Susan Mogensen discusses the confluence of transparency and accountability on governing boards.

BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS

Want your board meeting analyzed next, free of charge? Send us a link to the youtube video.

A subscriber asked us to watch a board meeting in Oregon. Here are the highlights from the board meeting:

• Total Public Minutes: 256 

  • Public Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 0 (0%)

  • Minutes Not Focused on Student Outcomes: 256 (100%)

  • Key Topics: consolidation - 117

•  What Coach Celebrates: 

  • Clear facilitation of public comment with expectations stated up front; chair reinforced process and boundaries succinctly.

  • Efficient handling of consent/action -- clean motion, roll call, and disposition to keep business tight.

• What Coach Recommends:

  • When major strategic topics (e.g., consolidation) are necessary, bracket them with brief Goal/Guardrail check-ins: open with the relevant student outcome(s) this decision is meant to improve, and close by identifying which Interim Goals the board will look for to see if reality is moving toward the Goal. This reframes adult input discussion around student outcomes.

  • Add a standing “Goal Monitoring” item (with time allotment) before public comment or major work sessions so the 50% target is not overshadowed by lengthy planning dialogues.

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

• Effective Guardrail Setting
  •  We are continuing the Policy Leadership series with a free 30-minute webinar on how to adopt high quality Guardrail policies and what to look for in Interim Guardrails.

    • 11am central on Friday, November 14th, 2025

    • RSVP Here

• Did you miss last month's 30-minute free webinar? Email Greg for a make-up session on any of our growing list of topics, including governance policy, delegation policy, effective budgeting, superintendent evaluation, professional services management, strategic planning, consent agendas, and more.

BONUS MATERIAL

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 -- including a video link, time use evaluation, and more.

  • Board Meeting Video

  • Meeting Materials

  • Strategic Path

  • Completed Time Use Evaluation

• A guidance document on effective Goal and Guardrail setting.
• A guidance document on how to design effective community listening practices.
• A guidance document on effective clauses for superintendent contracts.
• A guidance document on how to structure consolidation / right-sizing efforts.

Thank you for reading The Effective School Board Member. You ask tough questions and twice per month we get nationally certified school board coaches to provide answers. We help school board members tell their stories and provide additional resources to help them be more effective.

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