Tag: board-superintendent relations
Board Committees That Work
A couple of years ago during the first of four coaching sessions, the superintendent of a mid-size suburban school district identified board “micromanaging” as one of his 10 most worrisome challenges as the district’s relatively new chief executive officer.
When …
Bake Your Board Cake First, Then Worry About the Icing
A sorely disappointed superintendent and I were talking a couple of months ago. She, her school board, and her senior administrators had gone through an intensive weekend retreat six weeks earlier. She explained that it’d been put together to address …
Capitalizing on Spear Carriers to Preserve Your CEO Line of Credit
The school board’s Planning & Development Committee held four intensive work sessions over the course of six months in coming up with a list of schools to be closed because of falling enrollment, working closely with the superintendent and her …
Time to Update and Fine-Tune Your Superintendent Leadership Resolutions
There’s wide agreement in the K-12 sector that one of the preeminent vehicles for building and maintaining a close, productive, and enduring board-superintendent working relationship is a well-designed and meticulously executed process for board evaluation of superintendent performance. Superintendent …
How Ironic!
Over the years, I’ve been privileged to present a number of governance keynotes and workshops at AASA, NSBA, and state K-12 association meetings. As is my custom, at the beginning of each program, I’ve typically asked for a show of …
Engaging Board Members Creatively in Shaping the Annual Budget
The October 6 post at this blog made the case that superintendents – wearing the “Chief Governing Process Designer” hat – are well-advised to work with board committees in designing processes for engaging board members in a meaningful fashion in …
Board-Savvy Superintendents Know That Owners Make For Reliable Partners
A light bulb went off while I was sitting in on a board-superintendent-executive team work session early in my consulting career. The superintendent, assisted by her associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction and the district’s chief financial officer, was presenting …
Taking the Helm as CEO of Your District
We spent a lot of our time together last Saturday at the workshop I presented for AASA’s Aspiring Superintendents Academy (“Hit the Ground Running With Your New Board”) talking about the very special nature of the chief executive officer position …
Don’t Over-rely on Human Relations in Building Your Partnership With the Board
The superintendent was a consummate people-person who had from the get-go paid close attention to the human dimension of her working relationship with the board during her three years at the helm of this Midwestern district. As I learned over …
Making Superintendent Evaluation a Powerful Relationship Building Tool
Truly board-savvy superintendents make sure that their board evaluates their performance at least annually, employing a well-designed process that gets the heart of the superintendent’s leadership as chief executive of her district. Really board-savvy superintendents know that a simplistic approach …
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