NBMO - Duties and roles of the School Board

My role as a School Board Member is very different than I had expected.   So often I have heard, "I want to be a Board Member, because....".  I thought a School Board Member ran the district.   Although we have power, we have none as an individual.  The power is with the Board, meaning all members.  No one member can go to the Superintendent and demand anything.    School board members have no individual authority over school matters.  The authority of a Board Member includes expressing an opinion and casting a vote as a part of the governing board in a board meeting.

As a Board we are all responsible for:

·         Administration – hire a superintendent and delegates responsibility for administrative functions.

·         School Finance – communicate the district’s priorities to the superintendent through identified goals, review the budget submitted by the superintendent, make necessary revisions, and adopt the budget.

·         Hiring and Evaluating Personnel – employ professional personnel in accordance with policy upon recommendation of the superintendent and review and act on other personnel recommendation for the superintendent.

·         Policy - establish policy for the governance of the school system after considering the superintendent’s recommendations.

·         Program Evaluation – approves courses to be offered and requires periodic reports on the status of the programs offered.  Publish an annual education performance report on the district/schools and hold a hearing for its public discussion.

·         Community Relations – adopt a program of school-community relations and remain responsive to the community.

Our role as Board Members is to set clear expectations hold self and administration accountable, provide support to meet expectations, effectively integrate the district and the community, and continuously appraise ourselves  and periodically devote time to analyzing our performance.

It was suggested that we ask ourselves several question to assure we are being accountable:

·         How much of our agenda moves us toward our goals and student achievement?

·         How does this support a district goal?

·         How will we know if this is successful? What measurements will we use?

·         What were the alternatives?

·         Has the trend been positive or negative?

·         How will this affect student achievement?

We were reminded that “Everything we do here impacts the life of a child!”