Goal Alignment, Public Participation, & Athletics

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

• Question: What are some things I can ask during budget meetings to find out if the budget from the superintendent is aligned to the goals we adopted?      -- Board Member in Virginia

• TESBM: Congrats on having board-adopted Goals! Many school boards haven't taken full ownership of the goal-setting process, so the superintendent creates the Goals and the board just co-signs. This poor governance practice abdicates the board's authority and duty.

• Also, to best answer your question, your Goals should be SMART -- specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, and time-bound. When Goals aren't SMART, it's hard to determine alignment with the budget.

• Assuming these first two points are in place, here are questions to demonstrate alignment between the budget and the Goals.

  • Where and how does the budget prioritize improving the quality of instruction in the areas of our Goals?

  • Where and how does the budget prioritize improving the quantity of quality instruction in the areas of our Goals?

  • Which new strategies are being added to accomplish our Goals?

  • Which strategies are being continued based on evidence that they're helping accomplish our Goals?

  • Which strategies are being increased based on evidence that doing so will help accomplish our Goals?

  • Which strategies are being decreased (it’s a yellow/red flag if there are no items identified for strategic lowering) -- even if they are liked, even if they were effective, even if they benefited some students -- based on evidence that there are more effective investments for accomplishing our Goals?

  • Which strategies are being abandoned (it’s a yellow/red flag if there are no items identified for strategic abandonment) -- even if they are liked, even if they were effective, even if they benefited some students -- because there’s evidence that there are more effective investments for accomplishing our Goals?

  • What were prior year dollar investments in each strategy intended to accomplish each Goal?

  • What are the proposed dollar investments in each strategy intended to accomplish each Goal?

• If the superintendent can’t answer questions of this nature, our coaching is to consider not adopting the budget.

• Question: Why don't more people come to our school board meetings? What can we do about that?   -- Board Member in Washington

• TESBM: First, what are you trying to accomplish? If you want more community outreach and engagement -- authentic two-way conversation between board and community members -- schedule that specifically. Regularly scheduled school board meetings where people speak for 2 minutes are, with good reason, not well designed for that. If community outreach and engagement is a priority (and it should be), create a board/community outreach and engagement calendar scheduling all the two-way conversation opportunities for the year. No change to school board meetings required.

• Second, attendance at school board meetings isn't an automatic sign of community interest or disinterest. If people are attending because their needs aren't being met at their schools, the real solution is for families to get their needs met at their schools. Their issue needs to be addressed, but attending board meetings is a poor use of family time when issues should be handled at their school instead. If people aren't coming to board meetings because they don't know they're welcome, how to attend, or how to participate, the school board needs to address this. Start by listening to community members to understand why they aren't attending. Then make adjustments.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

• In the last newsletter, we shared about a school board that is considering a proposal to cut all sports to address their financial shortfall. You all were divided between people who a) agreed that academics is first but still felt sports shouldn't be cut, b) those who felt academics and athletics should be on equal footing, and c) those who felt that any cuts necessary to protect academics were justified. Our first coaching for situations like this is that the school board -- not just staff or consultants, but the school board itself -- needs to do a lot of community listening first to codify the community's vision and values into a set of Goals and Guardrails.

  • If the Goals or Guardrails indicate a requirement for athletics (which we've rarely seen), this conversation is over; the superintendent can't propose budget recommendations that violate the Goals and/or Guardrails. 

  • If the Goals and Guardrails do not indicate athletics as a priority, then the school board needs to have the normal Goals-to-budget alignment conversation we always recommend. 

    • If the superintendent can prove that cutting athletics is the most effective way to achieve the Goals while honoring the Guardrails, so be it (and yes, we've seen this once and it worked, so it is possible). 

    • If the superintendent can't provide evidence (and we rarely see meaningful evidence provided for typical actions, let alone such atypical actions), then the school board needs to make a judgment call -- and likely consider not adopting the budget.

• Ultimately, the community's vision and values (which is not to be confused with individual community members' wants and preferences) need to inform decisions like this.

• In this district, the school board is considering what to do about a social media post by the superintendent. 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

• Rick Maloney discusses the school board's role in the school system's strategic vision in his latest post.

• EdSource argues that school boards will be essential to the responsible integration of AI into America's public schools.

BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS

• A subscriber asked us to watch a board meeting in Arkansas. Here are the highlights from the regular board meetings:

  • Total Public Minutes: 78

  • Public Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 0

  • Minutes Not Focused on Student Outcomes:  Voting-52, Other-26, Closed Session-34

  • Key Topics: student recognition, success-ready graduates, budget & finance, and handbooks

  • What Coach Celebrates: We always enjoy seeing meetings that prioritize student recognitions at the beginning like this one. We strongly coach boards to prioritize reports about student outcomes at the beginning. This one did exactly that.

  • What Coach Recommends: We reviewed the strategic plan but did not find any SMART goals about student outcomes, and the only reference to any type of student outcomes data -- data about what students know or are able to do -- mentioned 3rd grade literacy. All other strategies and desired outcomes mentioned were adult inputs -- what adults will do to try to improve student outcomes. In our coding, we only indicate time as monitoring student outcomes if the board is receiving data about progress relative to their Goals. This is why the one segment about success ready graduates was not coded as being student outcomes focused. Given the overall professionalism of the board meeting and the quality of the strategic plan (except for lacking measurable Goals about student outcomes), it would be easy for the board to adopt SMART goals about student outcomes and then direct the superintendent to align reports to those goals.

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

• What Is The Board's Role In Strategic Planning?

  • We are hosting a 30-minute webinar on the elements of a strategic plan, which elements belong to whom, who implements, and how to monitor.

  • 11am central on Friday, June 6th, 2025

  • RSVP Here

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

• We are considering conducting a national school board member survey. If you could ask any question of school board members nationwide, what would you ask and why?

• 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 considering 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

  • Meeting Materials

  • Strategic Plan

  • Completed Time Use Evaluation

• A guidance document on effective budgetary alignment, including questions to ask at the very beginning of the budget creation process.

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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