Officer Selection, Declining Enrollment, & Blaming Teachers

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

• Question: There are two different board members who want to be board chair. I'm new to the board; how do I know who to vote for?    -- Board Members in Colorado, California, and North Carolina

• TESBM: Short answer: vote for the person most likely to keep the board relentlessly focused on improving student outcomes -- and use evidence to arrive at that, not just vibes. So what might that look like?

  • First, acknowledge that most board officer selection is based on 1) intuition/gut instinct (ie: who do I think would be the best?), 2) alliance/relationship (ie: who do I have the strongest connection with?), or 3) political instinct (ie: what can I do for you/what can you do for me?). None of these are what we recommend. If you aren't taking a rubric-based approach that centers student outcomes, then you are using one of these three approaches whether you realize it or not. Your students deserve better.
  • Second, adopt a rubric-based approach. This doesn't eliminate the vibes-based approach most commonly used, but it can help to reorient your decision making toward a focus on student outcomes. Identify what you believe to be the indicators of the knowledge, skill, and mindset necessary to focus on student outcomes as a board officer. Then review previous board meetings and -- based on what is in evidence of their past behaviors, not just what they are saying now that they want to be an officer -- score each candidate on each indicator.
•  This has come up so often lately that we'll be doing our next monthly free 30-min webinar on this topic. See below for details. 

• Question: What do we do about declining enrollment and school closure proposals? What's our role in that as a board? -- Board Members in Indiana, California, and Florida

• TESBM: Short answer: treat enrollment decline and possible closures as a resource-alignment problem in service of your student outcome Goals, not as a facilities problem. Only consider proceeding if you see clear evidence that the proposal advances your Goals while honoring your Guardrails.

• It's a red flag if you are being told that school closure is happening because of declining enrollment, for compliance purposes, for financial reasons, or anything else that isn't student outcomes focused. Whether advocates realize it or not, this line of thinking is divorcing operational decision making from student outcomes focused decision making which almost always works out poorly for students. As a board member, here's what you should expect from your superintendent instead: 

  1. Clear evidence of listening. If the superintendent's recommendations don't include insights into how impacted community members were engaged in the process, decline to even consider the conversation.
  2. After listening, then student outcomes focus. Always demand to hear the "why" before the "how." If the school board has already adopted Goals about student outcomes, the superintendent should begin there. If the board hasn't, the superintendent should show the goals about student outcomes that they're using to bring focus to the proposal.
  3. After the Goals, then strategy. What are the specific changes in the classroom experience for staff and students that the superintendent is suggesting will accomplish the Goals, what's the plan to implement those changes, and how much will full and effective implementation cost?
  4. After strategy, then resource alignment. Only after doing the first three things is it appropriate for the superintendent to bring forward a plan for alignment of school system resources that allows for funding of the strategies to improve student outcomes. 
• If you aren't receiving this information in this order, be very wary. If student outcomes isn't the focus, step three is almost always omitted; that's a mistake and the board shouldn't proceed without it. One additional pro-tip: don't approve school closure plans after enrollment has started for the following school year. If the enrollment window opens in November for the following August, then the board needs to vote on any closures before November. Don't string families and staff along.

• Question: We were doing goal monitoring at board meetings like you recommend. Afterward, the union attacked us and said that we were blaming teachers for the district not reaching the Goals. How do we address this false allegation?    -- School System Staff in California

• TESBM: Thank you for sharing the video of your board meeting. After watching it, we agree with the union's characterization. Your intention clearly was not to blame or demonize teachers, but when staff responds to questions about what's not working with, "teachers aren't implementing the instructional strategy" or "teachers aren't using the intended instructional materials" it does indeed sound like teachers are being blamed. Even if the aforementioned statements are factual, we would encourage approaching the conversation from within your own locus of control. That might sound something more like, "I haven't yet ensured that teachers have the supports they need to be able to prioritize the instructional strategies" or "I haven't yet ensured that the quality and alignment of the instructional materials meets teachers' needs." While these are functionally identical statements, their implications couldn't be more different. The former sound like blaming teachers while the latter sound like taking responsibility for not setting teachers up for success. When you are having the former conversation, you're missing both the intention and the possibility of Goal monitoring. When you're having the latter conversation, you're honoring the intention of Goal monitoring.

• So what to do now? A few things (depending on the nature of your relationships):
  • Visit with union leadership privately and thank them for catching you speaking in a way that was harmful and that didn't honor your values. Let them know that it won't happen again but that if somehow it does, that you invite them to call you on it so that you can do better.
  • During the visit with union leadership, ask about specific barriers and feed those into the superintendent’s “what’s next” response section of the monitoring report. Make this a habit.

  • Modify the next relevant monitoring reports to include concrete output metrics on implementation fidelity, PD, coaching cycles, and interim results.

  • Close the loop publicly at the following meeting: acknowledge what was said and what people can expect going forward.

• If you do these things, you have a chance to both repair trust and strengthen Goal monitoring so it actually creates the context for improving student outcomes -- without unintentionally throwing teachers under the school bus.

INTERESTING READS

• This recent paper evaluates conflict in school boards and its evolution. They'll make their database of school board meetings searchable which could be beneficial for additional research into school board effectiveness.
• Rick Maloney discusses the importance of advocacy as part of a school board's duties.

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 Ohio. Here are the highlights from the board meeting:

• Total Public Minutes: 350 

  • Public Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 15 (4%)

  • Minutes Not Focused on Student Outcomes: 335 (96%)

  • Key Topics: HR, student services, goal monitoring, transportation, SPED

•  What Coach Celebrates: 

  • You placed a discrete results-focused monitoring segment on academic outcomes (state report card vs. similar districts), including comparative trend analysis and clarifying questions about data visualization and foundational skills. This is aligned to Outcomes monitoring.

  • Tight handling of motions after reconvening ensured that essential actions (non-certificated hires; special education contracts; payment-in-lieu; easement) were resolved on the record.

• What Coach Recommends:

  • Adopt SMART Goals about student outcomes. We were unable to find this board's goals or a strategic plan on its website.

  • Lift Outcomes monitoring to ≥50% of meeting time. Replace department “reports” with structured Goal/Guardrail monitoring: one Goal at a time, each with a current result vs. target, analysis of variance, and next-step commitments with deadlines.

  • Publish a Goal Monitoring calendar in BoardDocs and anchor discussion to it. That makes it easier to align broad updates (e.g., recruitment, services) with specific Goals or Guardrails (e.g., grade-level math proficiency, early-literacy on-track, chronic absenteeism).

  • During monitoring, insist on SMART questions (Strategy-focused, Measure-focused, Ask-oriented, Results-focused, Time-bound). As an example tailored to the presented data: “Based on the Q2 target for % proficient in Algebra I, which strategies caused the week-over-week trajectory of growth needed to close the 2pt gap?”

  • Timebox procedural elements (pledge, norms, agenda adoption, comments) to ≤10 minutes total and consolidate executive sessions where lawful to reclaim public time for Goals.

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

• Effective School Board Officer Selection 
  • During our monthly free 30-min webinar, we'll discuss things school boards should be considering when it's time to select officers for the school board and policy options regarding officer selection.
  • 11am central on Friday, December 12th, 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

  • Completed Time Use Evaluation

• A guidance document on how to design effective community listening practices.
• A guidance document on how to structure consolidation / right-sizing efforts.
• A guidance document on effective school board officer selection strategies.

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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