Professional Services, Board Information, & Consent Agendas

Welcome to The Effective School Board Member. You ask tough questions and twice per month we get nationally certified school board coaches to provide answers. We also include resources to help school board members become more effective, like readings and school board meeting analysis.

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

• Question: We're having a debate on my board, so I'd like your perspective. How often should we change the firm that does our annual audit?     -- Board Member in Missouri

• TESBM: When considering professional services for the school board, we recommend 1 guide, 3 priorities, and 5 phases to keep in mind.

  • 1 guide: the board hires professional services only for board work (work the school board has not delegated to anyone else), never superintendent work (work the school board or law has delegated to the superintendent). 

  • 3 priorities: board work consists of tasks that 1) directly pertain to Goals, 2) Guardrails, and/or 3) tasks legally required of the school board to perform. These are the things school boards need professional services for.

  • 5 phases: purpose, selection, evaluation, renewal, interaction. First, clarify which of the 3 priorities is the purpose for the professional services, then create a process that screens for competence regarding the purpose, design the professional services evaluation before starting the contract, and define the interactions between the board, board members, and service provider (eg: can any board member incur more expenses or only a designee or only the board as a whole?). 

• Considering everything, the maximum length of time we recommend re-bidding professional services is every 5-8 years. If you're not holding your providers -- external auditors, external legal, talent service, coaches, etc -- to these expectations, now is the time.

• Question: What are some usual ways for school board members to stay informed about what's going on in our district?   -- Board Member in Idaho

• TESBM: First, divide what you want to be informed about into four buckets: work the school board has assigned to itself, work the school board has delegated (typically to the superintendent), and then the urgent version of both of those. So you end up with normal board work, urgent board work, normal superintendent work, and urgent superintendent work. The method for conveying information about each differs.

  • Board Work, Normal

    • Example: board agenda items, budget adoption, self evaluation

    • Method: monthly board agenda, 2yr board implementation timeline, monthly board chair update email

  • Board Work, Urgent

    • Example: unexpected superintendent vacancy

    • Method: chair phone call, chair email, chair text

  • Superintendent Work, Normal

    • Example: facility issue, parent concern, teacher concern

    • Method: weekly/bi-weekly superintendent update (often sent on Fridays), board Q&A process/referral system

  • Superintendent Work, Urgent

    • Example: student/staff seriously harmed at school

    • Method: superintendent phone call, superintendent email, superintendent text

• A few major things this approach clarifies:

  • Superintendent work doesn't go on board meeting agendas, only board work does.

  • Not everything that is important is also urgent.

  • There is no single method suitable for all information.

  • Information provided by the superintendent to one board member should go to all board members; it's problematic for some board members to be informed and others not.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

• In the last newsletter, we shared about a school board giving the superintendent significant compensation above their base salary. Subscribers who read the article expressed being shocked and disturbed. One was more direct and asked why the board hadn't been fired. The concept of local control -- practiced in every state -- implies the right to make choices that those outside the board will consider to be poor choices. So for the most part, when things like this happen, unless laws were broken (eg: some states have laws about limits on superintendent compensation) there's often not much that can be done. Our coaching is for superintendent compensation to be as little as possible -- particularly relative to the school system's principal compensation -- but that still allows for retention. In general, if superintendent compensation is more than 10% higher or lower than the regional average, the school board should have a very compelling reason that it has shared with its community.

• This state school board cancelled their board meeting because the meeting agenda, while posted physically on time, was posted electronically 19 minutes late. What would you do? Go here to share what you would do in this situation. In the next newsletter, we'll share your responses and our coaches' thoughts.

INTERESTING READS

• Here are two articles suggesting reading improvements in Louisiana and math improvements in Alabama worth paying attention to.

• A popular researcher discusses the importance and value of having access to assessments of student performance.

BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS

• A subscriber asked us to watch a March school board meeting in Illinois. Here are the highlights from the combined workshop/business meeting:

  • Total Minutes: 29

  • Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 0

  • Key Topics: student recognitions, consent agenda, regular business items

  • What Coach Celebrates: Enjoyed the 9 minutes at the start of the meeting that focused on recognizing students for a variety of athletic and academic accomplishments.

  • What Coach Recommends: None of student recognitions were for items aligned to the strategic plan/goals. We strongly recommend demonstrating alignment of intention by setting aside time each month to recognize students who have demonstrated significant growth relative to the board's adopted student outcome goals.

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITY

• Why & How Is An Effective Consent Agenda Used?

  • We are hosting a 30-minute webinar to go over what a consent agenda/consent calendar is, why you might use one, and how to do so effectively. Pro tip: if your consent agenda is taking more than 60 seconds, you need to join this session.

  • 11am central on Friday, April 11th, 2025

  • RSVP Here

• Did you miss last month's 30-minute webinar? Email Greg for a make-up session.

• Interested in attending the ESB 2-day school board transformation workshop with other school board members in your region? We are scheduling workshop locations for the second half of the year and are accepting requests from interested school boards. Contact us for more details.

BONUS MATERIAL

For paid subscribers, here are links to additional resources:

• Additional details about the analyzed meeting -- including a video link, time use evaluation, and more.

  • Board Meeting Video

  • Strategic Plan

  • Time Use Evaluation

• A guidance document regarding a 14-day timeline for the board's regular meeting agenda development. 

• A guidance document regarding effective consent agenda practices.

• A guidance document on how boards handle external professional services such as auditing, legal, and search.

Question we can answer? Submit it to our coaches.

Want a school board meeting analyzed? Send us the video.

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