What Are You Paying Your Board President?
A few years ago, I was chatting over lunch with a superintendent about her brand new board president. She was feeling pretty apprehensive since her relationship with the last president had been really rocky. He’d resisted her overtures to work …
3 Superintendents on Meeting the Community Relations Challenge in Turbulent Times
In the best of times fostering a positive district image in the eyes of community members and building close, productive relationships with key stakeholders are daunting challenges. If the parents of our students were our districts’ only “paying customers,” external/stakeholder …
Shared Leadership Traits of Successful Superintendents and Master Teachers
In Chicago recently to present a program for nonprofit chief executives on board-CEO relations, I made a side trip to visit a well-regarded nonprofit corporation, Smith Crossing, a retirement community southwest of the city. During my brief visit, I had …
How Superintendent-Aspirants Can Demonstrate Board-Savviness to Search Committees
A major ongoing theme of www.boardsavvysuperintendent.com has been preparing cabinet members who are what we call superintendent-aspirants to build productive, enduring partnerships with their new board. As our readers well know, a shaky board-superintendent working relationship is virtually certain to …
Boosting the Governing IQ of the Superintendent-Aspirants in Your Cabinet
Last August, sitting in on a Cabinet governance work session that Ehren Jarrett, Superintendent of the Rockford (Illinois) Public Schools, was facilitating, I observed a consummate board-savvy chief executive in action. Over the course of four hours, Ehren and his …
Deb Henton: An Award Winning Superintendent’s Successful Transition to Association CEO
As you’ll learn from the video interview that Deb Henton and I recorded recently, she brought in-depth, wide-ranging K-12 leadership experience to her new role as Executive Director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators when she took the helm …
3 Quick Fixes That Won’t Corral the Rogues on Your Board
I’ve met more than a few “rogue” board members over the course of my 35 years as a governance advisor. I define these board members as trouble makers who march to their own governing tune at their own tempo, with …
Governing Is Truly a Team Sport
A little over six years ago I was guilty of an error of judgment that taught me a couple of valuable lessons. I’d been retained by a mid-size Midwestern school district to assist in planning, facilitating, and following up on …
Board Standing Committees Supercharge Virginia Beach City Schools Governance
In the recent video interview I recorded with them, Board Chair Carolyn Rye and Superintendent Aaron Spence of the Virginia Beach City Schools make a compelling case for employing well-designed board standing committees to assist the school board in carrying …
Your Board President: a Primo Stakeholder You Neglect at Your Peril
The special board work session had been scheduled to consider a key recommendation coming out of the daylong board-superintendent-cabinet governance retreat three weeks earlier: replacing the board’s dysfunctional silo committees (e.g., curriculum and instruction) with committees aligned with the board’s …
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