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I had someone recently ask me if we, the board of education, evaluate all staff in advance of recommendations for raises. This made me pause and ultimately, decide to write this article. While it’s clear to me that our (the board’s) only employee is the superintendent and relies on a chain of command to conduct subsequent evaluations, I’m sure there were others who had this same question.
In the last eight years, the main question I get (even from my kids) is: "What do school boards do?” My answer: Put simply, school boards set policy, adopt a budget and hire and evaluate a superintendent.
That usually then brings up the next question of: "Well, what is the role of the superintendent?” I hope what follows will help make this clearer.
If you’ve written to the board of education about an issue, you most likely received this answer: “Thank you for your email. The superintendent is in charge of district and day-to-day operations while the board governs through policy.”
While there are select issues that truly involve the board, we’ve seen a growing interest in how the district operates on a day-to-day basis. For instance, we’ve received emails about the Kids Plus wait list, vendors seeking to do business with the district, educator/staff evaluations, classroom instruction concerns, professional development, etc. While helpful to hear feedback from our community regarding the previous concerns, ultimately, it is the superintendent that runs the district.
What do I mean by "run the district"? The superintendent, in collaboration with their leadership teams, educators and staff, decide on instructional framework(s), curricula, professional development — daily operations of the district. It is important to note here that the superintendent does not have free will as they have to operate within the agreed-to guidelines of collective bargaining with educators and staff in addition to board policy. Collaborative decisions from these groups are what shows up at board meetings.
When information is presented at board meetings, most items have passed through several hands. For instance, administrative hires might have gone through three levels of interviews with parents, educators and staff before we (the board) see it as an agenda item. This does not mean we rubber stamp the recommendations. Rather, we provide another source of input should something seem out of the ordinary.
Another example is curriculum adoptions. Boards are tasked with final adoption of various curricula in our schools. Over the past year, reading, physical education, health, drivers education, social studies and French curricula have been reviewed. Scores of educators have examined different curricula and even piloted them in their classrooms.
For instance, Kenwood educators piloted the new Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum for a full year before adoption. Again, when it was presented to the board, we had a chance to hear about the enormous amount of work it took to get to this point, ask relevant questions and celebrate the work of all the people involved. We didn’t rubber stamp it but we did trust that the experts — in this case, our educators — had done enough to vet the curricula for approval.
The board, however, is most concerned with policy and governance. What does that mean? We direct the superintendent through our board policies. It is incredibly important then that these policies remain updated, relevant, fair and equitable. If a community member brings a concern to us and is unsure if we can help, we might ask them to review our current policy and forward us suggestions to clarify said policy to better address their concerns.
In saying this, we understand that not everyone even knows we have policies. Our board has spent the last four years working to narrow close to 400-plus policies down to about 200. Once unwieldy, we can now spend time clarifying our policies to make them work for our district.
Additionally, we clarify the district’s purpose. What does that mean? We engage community, educators and staff in a process to set a clear direction for our district. For us, we engaged in a strategic planning process. Our mission, vision and strategic plan are incredibly crucial to purpose and are what the superintendent uses to decide their day-to-day operations.
Overall, the board’s role is more of checks and balances, ensuring transparency and accountability in decision-making. Thus, it is important that the board be a representative group of community members impacted by board policy. It's a responsibility that requires diverse perspectives and expertise around finances, policy and evaluations. Those most familiar with the field of education, specifically retired educators, would be invaluable contributors.
If you’ll have me, I’d like to periodically update you on our role as board members and what we do. And for the record, my answer to the question that led this article included the following: “I’m pretty sure our educators and staff wouldn’t want seven random people to evaluate them. Additionally, we don’t have the wo/manpower to do it!”
Gianina Baker is president of Champaign Unit 4 School Board and has served as a member for the past eight years. The opinions represented above is her speaking as an individual board member, not on behalf of the board.
