360 Evals, Time Use Eval,  & Supt Turnover

SPECIAL REQUEST

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QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

• Question: Do you recommend the school board receive a 360 evaluation each year? The superintendent? Should the board mandate it?  -- Board Member in Texas

• TESBM: A 360 evaluation is designed to give the recipient -- either the superintendent or the school board -- anonymous feedback to support their leadership. The process involves reaching out to staff, parent leaders, key partners, and community leaders for feedback.

• We recommend school boards consider having a 3rd party conduct a 360 evaluation at least once every two or three years. The results should inform the board's annual self-evaluation. Annual 360 evaluations aren't necessary unless there's high turnover.

• If the board chooses a 360 evaluation, only the board should see the results. If the superintendent chooses a 360 evaluation, only the superintendent should see the results. This is for personal growth and development, not for weaponization.

• Question: How often do you recommend that school boards evaluate their use of time and why?  -- Board Member in Pennsylvania

• TESBM: We try to showcase a board meeting time use evaluation in most newsletters because of how important this practice is. If school board members are unaware of their focus or non-focus on student outcomes, it's hard to take action to do anything about it. 

• School boards that are intensely focused on improving student outcomes will invest at least 50% of their minutes each month into monitoring their Student Outcome Goals. Initially, we recommend school boards evaluate their use of time every month. Once a school board has passed that threshold and remained there six months, then only completing a time use evaluation quarterly or even just annually makes sense (unless they drop back below 50%).

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

• In this district, a board member was accused of making inappropriate remarks to staff. What would you do in this situation? Go here to share what you would do in these situations. In the next newsletter, we'll share your responses and our coaches' thoughts.

INTERESTING READS

• Nationwide, superintendent turnover appears to be at an all-time high.

• The latest NAEP scores did not provide much good news.

BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS

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

• Total Public Minutes: 104
  • Public Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 61 (59%)
  • Minutes Not Focused on Student Outcomes:  Guardrail Monitoring-4, Voting-13, Supt Eval-9, Other-17
  • Key Topics: superintendent evaluation, personnel, staff reports
•  What Coach Celebrates: It's great to see a school board placing goal monitoring early on the agenda and sustaining the monitoring conversation for over an hour. This focused the meeting on student outcomes. In addition, approval of the progress monitoring calendar formalizes the board's ongoing focus on student outcomes. Guardrail monitoring was kept crisp and brief to preserve time for a student outcomes focus.
• What Coach Recommends: Increase expectations for pre-read material so dais time stays focused on student outcomes.

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

• Effective Goal Setting

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

    • 11am central on Friday, October 3rd, 2025

    • RSVP Here

• Effective Guardrail Setting
  •  We are continuing the Policy Leadership series with a 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 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, or consent agendas.

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

  • Goals & Guardrails

  • Completed Time Use Evaluation

• A guidance document on effective 360 evaluations for the board and superintendent.

• A guidance document on effective Goal and Guardrail setting.

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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