First-hand, second-hand or third-hand:  how “handy” is your decision making?

When you make a decision based upon information, which of the following do you find most credible?

First-hand – information gathered by what you personally have heard, seen and experienced.

Second-hand – information told to you based upon the personal observations and experiences of others.

Third-hand – information regarding the observations and experiences of people gathered and retold by others.

Elected members of school boards face this question frequently when confronted with a school problem or an issue requiring board action.  This is a dilemma of positional relationships.  How many “hands removed’ can a board member be and still render just decisions that portray a thoughtful consideration of all information sources?  As every information teller has built in biases, how can a board member sift information and bias to reach a credible understanding, and, as distance grows between first-hand involvement and resulting information sharing, how can a board member filter the levels of functionality that can color the information the board hears?

School boards employ school faculty, staff and administrators.  Faculty and staff work directly with students and the parents of students as week as community members who come to school.  Many meaty questions and issues are created at this level of the school district as this is where the greatest number of employees work and personal interactions arise that can result in a conflict of interests.  Whereas, we tend to focus of teacher-student interactions in and around the classroom, adult-child interactions on the school bus, on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the school offices, on the playing fields and in the locker rooms, on the stage, and at night and weekend activities account for a greater number of interactions than teacher-student.  Each and every one of these interactions creates first hand experiences that shape the school experiences of persons involved.  It is difficult to know which interactions will generate an issue that must be resolved, although when a hot issue rises everyone involved knows it for what it is.

One level of functionality away, administrators supervise and evaluate school faculty and staff.  Administrative functions mean that most interactions are with faculty and staff and some are with students, parents, and community members.  Often, student and parent interactions are referred to the administrator by faculty and staff.  Their span of responsibility places administrators at the second-hand of most faculty and staff interactions with students and parents.  Others tell administrators of their first-hand experiences or submit a report about their experience.

Administrators, of course, are first-hand in their interactions with those they supervise.  A majority of administrative first-hand experiences are casual and informed by “walking about” or “being present” around the school.  Administrators who take a holistic approach to their function look at classrooms as representing teachers, children, instruction, learning, curriculum, orderliness, furniture, technology, climate, lighting, air temperature and quality, cleanliness and, at the end, the administrator understands a satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what has been seen and heard and felt.  Extend this holistic approach to the school campus and every room of the school and you approach the first-hand experiences of an administrator.

The board supervises and evaluates administrators and this places the board at a third-hand relationship to faculty and staff interactions with students and parents and second-hand to interactions between administrators and faculty and staff.  Everything that is first-hand to a “holistic experiencing” administrator is second-hand to the board.  Everything that is first-hand to children and teachers and staff and is told or reported to an administrator who reports stories of these experiences to the school board is third-hand to the board.

Confusing?  Perhaps.  Consequential?  You bet.  Board members have an exceptionally small amount of first-hand experiences in the school environment.  School board meeting agendas are chock full of presentations and reports based upon second- and third-hand interactions with information and experiences.  All data is filtered.  All stories are filtered.  And, every second- and third-hand reporting of information and explaining of conclusions drawn from data and school experiences calls credibility and trust into question.  When the data and stories are objective and all persons are in agreement with the reporting, credibility and trust are assumed and not an issue.  And, most board agenda items are in this category.

However, when stories do not jive, when the “handedness” of information gathering, interpretation, and storytelling creates different versions of the same interaction, the board is placed in a “Which version is more credible and who do you trust more?” dilemma.  When disputations arise – on a school bus between driver and children, on the baseball team between coach and players, regarding student achievement on state assessments, between administrators and students and parents regarding a disciplinary issue, and between employee groups on “turf issues” – the board must moderate, arbitrate, or adjudicate a resolution.

Often, this is a “no win” dilemma.  In the immediacy, the board faces an either/or proposition.  There may well be middle ground, but disputing persons view these as win-lose situations.  Overtime, the either/or can become a we/they issue and if the board tends to believe we more than they, they lose confidence in the justness of the board and the system.

Consequential?  Unbelievably.

Arbitrarily, board members have been held or hold themselves in distanced relationships with students, parents, faculty and staff.  Board members have been “schooled” into believing that the handling of issues at the first-hand is the responsibility of their administrators.  Board members are told not to communicate directly with teachers and staff and principals, but with the superintendent who communicates down the chain of command with all employees.  Board members, by design, have been relegated to second- and third-hand information.  Hence, board members are constantly in the chair of “do we support the information filtering and storytelling of our administration or not?”

Balderdash.  There is no statute or rule that precludes school board members from commingling in the life of the schools so as to be first- or second-hand to the information that is the lifeblood of the system.  Being first-hand never places the board member into a faculty or a staff or an administrative function.  When in the first-hand mode, that is, a board member observing in the classrooms, hallways, media centers, cafeterias, auditoriums and athletic areas of the schools, board members are in an oversight function.  They are not supervising children.  They are not evaluating employees.  They are witnessing the manner in which the programs and policies approved by the board are playing out for the education of all children and for the professional work of all employees.

Board members cannot be first-hand to everything in a school.  That is neither possible nor desired.  However, when members have enough first-hand information against which they can weigh the second- and third-hand information they are provided, then board decisions are seen by all stakeholders as being better informed of a complete picture and more just to the realities of all concerned.  Trust is not blindly given, it is earned.  A board member observing employees at their daily work – administrators, teachers and all staff – with frequency and objectivity sees credible work first hand and can trust that credibility.  Employees observing board members observing their work with frequency can credibly know that the board member is creating a base of first-hand knowledge.  Trust flows both ways when people work to establish credibility.

I encourage fellow board members to invest in first-hand experiences in their schools.  Remember your level of function and gain a balance to your informed understanding of the life and times of your school district.  If you keep to your function, that is board oversight, you are in a great position to support every person in your school community by being credible and balanced in your understanding of first-, second-, and third-hand stories.