Tag Archives: trust

Now that you have elected new board members, make them be trustworthy

Posted on by
Reply

Public trust is given to school board members and that trust must be repaid through the members’ informed and active governance of our schools.  Boardsmanship is an active not a passive trust.

It is spring election time, and two school board seats are on the local ballot.  There are no other school district issues to be decided.  If the past informs the future, less than 30% of the eligible voters will decide the two people who will be part of our seven-member school board.  As a generalization, this is the usual pattern of school board elections – 30% or fewer of eligible voters decide who governs our school district.  The generalization does not hold when there is a school referendum or money on the ballot.  Two years ago, almost 70% of eligible voters cast ballots on big money referendum questions and for the persons running for board election that spring.  Dollars and cents issues raise more voter interest than electing who governs our schools. 

Continuing in a predictive mode, fewer than 50 of the voters in the school board election will attend a school board meeting in the next year.  Some of the 50 may physically attend numerous meetings, but fewer than 50 names will appear in person.

That said, how does the public go about the work of trusting elected school board members?

Explicit and implicit trust.

Wisconsin statute 120.12 defines school board duties.  The first two duties set the expectations.  These are –

  • Management of the school district, and
  • General supervision.

Board members are responsible for the “… possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district…” and are authorized to “… visit and examine the schools of the district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools…”.   Subsequent sub-sections of the statute define the scope of sub-duties.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120

In the care, control and management of the school district, there are three top order priorities.  These are –

  • Safe and secure schools.
  • Defined curricular instruction leading to quality student outcomes.
  • Inclusive extra-curricular programs, including athletics and fine arts.

These are non-negotiably explicit.  All issues of safety and security race to the school board agenda demanding immediate attention.  Everything from violence on the campus to drop off time on school bus routes to locks on bathroom stall doors is explicitly a board member’s concern.  Failure to resolve any of these issues invites public furor and assurance that someone else will be elected when member terms expire, if not petitions for recall elections.  The public at large explicitly trusts board members to ensure safe and secure schools.

Issues of curricular instruction and extra-curricular programming, though explicit, ignite very selective groups of the public and seldom the public at-large.  Offending the football boosters will not ignite boosters of phonic-based reading or the Art Club.  Yet almost every school activity, curricular and extra-curricular, has a support group that explicitly trusts the board to be positive in its actions affecting their interest.  The connections between moms and dads, alums, and community members wearing school colors are vital to ongoing school culture and future ballot initiatives.  No board member wants to be singled out for offending a support group to the point that the group becomes active in campaigning against school programs and initiatives.  Special interest groups throughout the school community explicitly trust board members to support their interests.

What about children?  Is there an explicit trust between board members and the children of the school district?  Yes but no.  The words “child” and “children” appear hundreds of times in state statures regarding school governance.  The education of children is at the center of the school board’s work.  Yet children are seldom vocal or present when the board does its’ work.  At best, children are explicitly referenced yet the bonds of trust are all implicit.  And children do not vote.

While no board member wants to actively and publicly deny a child or group of children their wants, board members do it all the time.  And they don’t know it when they do it.  A change in school lunch vendors and the foodstuffs they supply will be applauded by some children and despised by others.  Pizza, for example, a staple of school cafeterias changes when vendor contracts change.  Few children will speak about decisions to change brands of toilet paper, yet every child is affected. 

On a larger arena, decisions about grading scales, graduation requirements, prerequisites for course selections are discussed by the board in committee and board meetings, yet few children asked how they would vote, if they could.  Children implicitly trust board members to make positive policy decisions on their behalf.

Trust is as trust is perceived.

Trust is visible.  Board members need to be seen in the schoolhouse and at school events.  Their presence in school may seem mundane, yet their lack of presence infers no personal experience, observation, or first-hand information.  I always questioned a board member who took a strong position at a board meeting about the math curriculum yet had not observed teaching and learning.  Relying on data is okay but combining data about unacceptable student performance data combined with observations of real teaching and learning in the classroom makes a winning argument.  A board member greatly increases her perception of trustworthiness when she says, “I saw how frustrated our teachers and students are with how the publisher presents pre-Algebra.  Our current text materials are not clear and direct in scaffolding required pre-Algebra skills.”  Even though an administrator may say similar things, when a board member makes these statements, they enact their trustworthiness by not being reliant only on what they are told.

Some may say board members’ presence in the school is intrusive.  In fact, the Wisconsin Association of School Board handbook for board members downplays board member visits during the school day.  “Trust the school administration”, the WASB advises.  Board presence during the school day is not a distrust but partnership between the superintendent and the board.  A secure superintendent invites board members to visit school; an insecure administrator does not. 

Trust is vocalized.  When a person meets a board member in an aisle at the grocery store or at the gas pump, and asks a school-based question, board members are given a prime-time opportunity to display and build trust.  “I am open to listening to you.  And I am open to telling you what I think.”  The rules of confidentiality always apply, but outside of forbidden topics, talking with others when they want to talk with with a board member builds mutual trust.

Perception is reality.

Lastly, newly elected board members are expected to go through an acclimation phase.  However, from day one of their term to their last day, the public is always watching.  Board members are constantly measured by how others perceive their work.  While we expect new members to learn, the perception of how new members go about their learning, and how they become fully engaged builds the reality of how much they are trusted.

Be trustworthy to be trusted.

Expand Your First-Hand Knowledge To Grow Your Credibility

Posted on by
Reply

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.