Why governance training is essential for effective school board leadership

More about the podcast

In this episode, we explore why board training is essential for effective governance and decision-making in public education, how it can help school boards function efficiently and the importance of ongoing education in areas such as AI and cyber risk.

We also discuss the challenges of onboarding new board members and the vital role superintendents play in supporting board development.

Find out what advice Audrey gives for how to keep board members motivated and engaged in their own development.

Resources on board development and training for public facing boards

• Making board development intuitive, ongoing and effective: A guide for public education and local government
• Public sector board development: Practical tips from leaders who know
• Why board development matters: An infographic and guide for government and school boards

Here is an edited transcript of the conversation:

Jill Holtz: So today I'm joined by Dr Audrey Young. Audrey, welcome and tell me a little bit about yourself, your organization and your role there.

Dr. Audrey Young: Thank you. I'm Dr. Audrey Young and I am a member of the Texas State Board of Education. I represent District 8 and I'm the chair of the Committee on Instruction. And one of the charges of the State Board of Education is the elements of school board training.

Jill Holtz: Which is why I invited you to talk to me today, because I'm really interested in finding out more. So to kick off, why Audrey do you think board training and development is important for school boards?

Dr. Audrey Young: Well, to answer your question, I'd say that I thought it was pretty important because that's what I wrote my dissertation on.

The school boards have one employee and that is their superintendent. And so it's really important that school boards have the training that they need in order to help inform their one employee, the superintendent to run their district and to oversee what's in the best interest of the students in their community. And so board development means a lot because not everyone comes from the same background.

All great boards have a variety of people from different backgrounds. You've got your maybe your local teacher that retired and ran for a board, your local pastor, your banker, your business owner, your stay at home mom. And that's what makes a great board because they are the voice and the vision of the community. However, not everyone has had training where we're being a school board member and the responsibilities of that school board member lie. And so that training that's embedded in Texas as a requirement is super important so that the boards understand what it is that they need to do.

Jill Holtz: Yeah, because they may have run because they're passionate about one aspect or they thought that they could come effect change and they may not realize that they themselves as an individual can't do that but it's up to the board as a kind of a unit to work towards as you said helping their one employee and obviously meeting the goals of that district. And just talking a little bit more about governance training, how important is it for the board to have governance training? We talk about board development, let's talk about actual governance training. What's your perspective there?

Dr. Audrey Young: Of course, I feel like all of the training that boards receive is very important, but governance training is, of course, the most important if we are going to put it in tiered system, because they need because boards need to understand how to work together. They need to understand that it is board majority that makes the vote. They are passing the vote. Then it's important that everyone understands what the board operating procedures are and how that's the expectation of how the board will function. In addition to knowing what their role is and capacity for ensuring that the that there are positive student outcomes for the district and developing those with the superintendent.

Jill Holtz: And then, you know, what other topics other than governance, their own role, kind of the rules and responsibilities, swim lanes, what they can and can't do. What other topics do you think that boards need to educate themselves and be developed on?

Dr. Audrey Young: Not every board utilizes Robert's Rules of Order but definitely whatever the system is that the board utilizes, the board president, vice president, leadership of the board utilizes to maintain an efficient board meeting and so that people have their opportunity to take turns in a respectful and succinct manner in that there's an order to that process. So definitely if it's not Robert's Rules or if it is Robert's Rules of Orders then they take a short course, read the book, watch some other boards in action utilizing those methods so that they know how to work with all of the board members in the public arena in a functional way.

Jill Holtz: So we've talked about kind of understanding roles and responsibilities, how the district's governed, we've talked about how the meeting should run, maybe how we should work together. What about external challenges? Are there areas that boards need to educate themselves there?

Dr. Audrey Young: Absolutely boards need to you know, every board member is going to get stuck in a grocery store cornered by a constituent with a specific concern about some teacher that they that they want fired or they're going to get somebody is going to sit next to them at a football game and talk in their ear about how much they don't like the athletic director and somebody may think that when they got on the school board that they could affect the change on their own of hiring and firing people and that's not the case. And so it's very important that people understand what their specific role and responsibility is for being a board member and how you also have to work as a board majority because the board members are not singular. You can't make a decision on your own and you cannot do that and you can't promise constituents or you ought not promise constituents that you can make those changes without having the wherewithal and the majority vote to have some actions taken.

Jill Holtz: Yeah. And are you hearing like boards needing to kind of upskill themselves and educate themselves, say in areas like A.I. coming along or, you know, cyber risk is not going away and it's kind of continually evolving. Are those other areas as well that the board needs to either individually educate themselves or as a group educate themselves? What's your perspective on that?

Dr. Audrey Young: I would definitely recommend that groups as a whole educate themselves in the A.I. world. It's coming and policies are going to have to be written and developed and adopted in local school districts. It reminds me of when cell phones became a thing. You know, when I was first in education, cell phones didn't exist. That was not an issue.

And then now we, you know, and the pendulum has swung and teachers are telling students, pull out your phone and scan this QR code and, you know, watch this video and that kind of stuff. And now we've got we've got that pendulum coming back. There's too much screen time. Kids have too much access to information. The phones have now come back to it's a distraction. A.I. is going to be the same way. Chat GPT, all the things.

And so how do we keep kids from cheating? How do we keep people from all the fake news and for reporting on things that are not truths? So it's definitely an area of interest that boards need to start checking into because it's going to be a direct impact on the classrooms.

Jill Holtz: I suppose that's an interesting thought to take further that whatever it is, whether it's AI or cyber or any kind of challenge that's out there in the external environment is that the board members have to be able to have some kind of basic understanding of it in order to make policy decisions as in they're adopting or not a policy that's being proposed, isn't that right? And so they have to have a basic understanding of those concepts if it's something like that.

What have you seen working? I know you talked about in Texas there, there's a mandate, you have to do some board development and training. When you're developing a board training and development programme for your board, what are some mistakes to avoid? Have you seen anything that worked or anything innovative that you've seen? You know, talk to me about that. Have you seen anything interesting on your travels about that?

Dr. Audrey Young: To answer your questions, one of the most difficult things to do is to get a board to work together. And I don't necessarily mean lockstep where they walk out with a unanimous vote about everything, although I think that's a superintendent's dream. It is just to get people to respond to and respect others, the other ideas and opinions and their lens in which they come to the table through.

And so getting them to work together, we use the word team a lot, but I would just say learning to work together so that everybody has the opportunity to have a part within the decision making process is a difficult thing to accomplish with some boards, some other boards are very like-minded or at least they have a lot of respect toward each other, even if they aren't like-minded.

Jill Holtz: So what I'm hearing you say is that something that board members need to be intentional about and kind of again educate themselves on how to move towards that. I that doesn't mean everybody has to agree with everything but that you are you know ultimately a team made up of different people is not going to agree on everything but that you can work together towards the goals of the district. Am I hearing that right?

Dr. Audrey Young: That is correct. So the board would determine what those goals are. And then as the board, they would go through and work on those goals as through their superintendent, through their one employee to reach those goals.

Jill Holtz: Now the board has to take responsibility for looking at where its gaps are and what it needs to educate and develop on. as far as the superintendent and its employee and their part of a governance team together, what responsibilities do you think supers have in kind of helping or supporting board training and development? What can they do to help?

Dr. Audrey Young: Superintendents take on a lot when they have seven, eight, nine bosses, depending on the board and its size. And that's a lot of people to get up to speed on what's going on in public education, especially if they don't come from public education. So superintendents take on a lot when they get there. I would say that outside of being able to ensure that the information is presented with transparency, it's also implemented and presented with some simplicity in that it's easily translatable to the board so that they can in their mind's eye apply it to their role in governance over for the district and how it translates to the buildings, the teachers, to the staff, and to the students.

Jill Holtz: So they can play a really pivotal role and help translate that kind of complex running of the district into ways that the board member can understand and therefore be able to help make those decisions to progress or kind of whatever that decision is that they need to vote on. So it was obviously an election year last year for a lot of school boards. Let's talk about onboarding new board members. That's a kind of a critical time, it feels to me, for giving new board members key training and success. What's your perspective on kind of what makes successful or unsuccessful onboarding?

Dr. Audrey Young: I definitely I feel that if board members have the opportunity to take a training related to what are your expectations as a board member even before they run. So they have an idea of what being a board member entails, the time that it entails, the expectations you do your homework before you get to the meeting, not while at the meeting. But then also once you win your election and you are on a board, it's very important that and within the state of Texas, it's required that a board member receive an orientation to the school district. So you learn about the student population, the current academic rating of the district, if you're in a district that they rate.

We do that here in Texas. The budget, the finance concerns, any recent surveys or interviews that have been completed with parents and teachers and staff, any of the most recent and current information and data that's been collected about the districts, it's important to go ahead and share all of that information with a new board member.

Jill Holtz: Yeah, and then there might be people who are into their second or even their third year as established. What kind of ongoing training do you think they should be looking at for themselves? Or what's the perspective of, it's not always at the start, it's kind of an ongoing process, isn't it? Is there a mindset there?

Dr. Audrey Young: It is, and I think it's important to establish a baseline and then demonstrate growth in each of those areas. And so if a second or third year board member remembers the original set of goals that they came in for the district at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of their term, how has the district grown? What goals have continued to make progress? What goals have been met? What goals have been removed? What, you know, how it is that different.

Board members and in each of their terms, you learn something new every time you each year. And so when you're no longer a baby board member and you're in your second year and you're starting to repeat information, this is the time of year we go over budget. This is the time of year we do the superintendent evaluation. This is the time of year we have our financial audit. That that information becomes no, it's no more new. It's not new anymore to the board member. And so they learn each time and can go a little deeper, come in with a little more understanding, ask some more pointed questions that helps them move along and reach the goals that have been set.

Jill Holtz: I love that: baby board members. So at the baby stage, you're really getting to grips with what is the district, what are the goals. Then in second year, you've now got that all under your belt. You can start to maybe ask more effective questions and learn how. And actually, that is an area that you can educate yourself how to ask effective questions. Obviously, I work for Diligent. We're passionate about Diligent community technology, supporting boards to be better. Talk to me about what your perspective is on technology.

Dr. Audrey Young: I think that technology, well, it plays a huge role in what I said earlier, and that is getting your homework done in advance, right? And so, Diligent offers all the opportunity to be able to access your documents, your agendas, your notes, the resources to access with district policies and procedures, previous agendas, archived materials, and that's important to be able to draw the historic information as well as the current information and it's readily available at your fingertips.

Jill Holtz: Yeah, think having that in one place that everybody knows they're looking at the latest version of stuff as well. They're not trying to hunt around on emails. Talk to me then just to kind of finish up in terms of self-evaluation, which I think you touched on is how do you think a school board should use self-evaluation to kind of help look at the effectiveness of what it needs and how can you measure some of that?

Dr. Audrey Young: It definitely begins with knowing where you came from.

Jill Holtz: Yeah.

Dr. Audrey Young: Right. And so what's that baseline for the board? Where are we starting? And then do progress monitoring just like we do with students. Right. How do they start at the beginning of the school year? How are they doing in the middle of school year? How are they doing at the end of the school year? And that's how a season of a board member should go. What happened at the beginning of the school year or the beginning of my term? If you were elected in November or if you came in on May in May, because we we have two times a year that you can be elected in the state of Texas, depending on your district. And so with that, you have to know where you came from in order to measure that progress moving forward. But you also, at a competency level, you need to know what you didn't know and what you need to learn. And that's important too. And it's okay not to know everything when you're coming in on the board. That's the joy of being a Baby Board member and learning as you go along.

Jill Holtz: Yeah, I love that. So to finish, I'm going to ask you some quick fire questions, just answer in kind of 30 seconds or less. So are you ready? OK, what's the number one thing that superintendents, executive leaders should be doing when it comes to board training and development?

Dr. Audrey Young: They should ensure that they meet the training requirements within the time that's been mandated or allotted by laws, the district or district policy.

Jill Holtz: How can they ensure that board training is ongoing and not just a one time event?

Dr. Audrey Young: Scheduling it regularly. So it's part of an ongoing training session throughout each school year.

Jill Holtz: And what advice would you give for how to keep board members motivated and engaged in their own development.

Dr. Audrey Young: Providing them with the additional support that they need in order to answer the questions that they have, as well as providing them proof of progress so that they understand their own successes as well as successes aboard as a whole.

Jill Holtz: Thank you so much Audrey, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing all your advice and perspective.

Dr. Audrey Young: Thank you for having me.