How do you know if the board meetings are effective? The ultimate measure is the success of the parochial school. When the students are growing and changing, enrollment is increasing, donors are more generous, and the year-end report shows a modest surplus, it is easy to conclude that the board is effective. Is there a way to evaluate effectiveness between annual reports?
Review the votes by the board. After voting to approve the minutes, what else did they vote on? Did the other votes help the students grow, enrollment increase, donors become more generous, or advance the mission?
Sometimes boards feel that since “we are all friends” the formality of a vote is unnecessary. There are three important reasons to always vote. First, votes are recorded so it is easy to find and check on the decisions months or years later. In addition, the recording of the vote creates transparency. Second, the students’ lives and development will be affected. Voting helps encourage everyone to thinking carefully about the decision. Third, the success of the school involves a significant amount of other people’s money (donors, parents, and the church’s). Voting records the commitment. The last two reason are important enough to justify being careful, professional, and transparent.
Before the State of the Union Address, there was talk in the press about the gridlock. How do we know whether Congress accomplished anything? We look at the record to see how many times they voted and what they voted on.
How many times did your school board vote at its last meeting?
The four reasons that we have boards are to monitor activity, be self-managing, plan, and create policy. Monitoring activity is reading reports and ensuring that expectations are met. There is nothing to vote on in that process. Self-managing is ensuring board members come to meeting, recruiting new board members, running the board and committee meetings, electing officers, etc. It takes very few votes to do that.
The board leads through planning. Plans demonstrate the board is looking into the future. Plans set direction. They coordinate activity. They set expectations. They define the roles of individuals and groups.
Planning is an ongoing process. In most meetings, there will be a plan to discuss, amend, and approve. Sometimes it is changes to the strategic plan. Most of the time, it is an element of the strategic plan that is changing, a committee plan that needs approval or the staff has a plan for consideration.
The board uses policies to protect the donors, school, students, and staff. Setting policy is the process of giving permission and establishing boundaries.
There are two times to set policy. One is when a plan changes or is established. The other is when a report about activity (internal or external) suggests that new boundaries would be helpful.
An obvious example is after a crisis. After the global financial meltdown, reviewing, rewriting, and creating policy was fashionable. After creating policy, the government wrote new laws. Did your board review your investments and create new policies to protect the school from the new risks?
Planning is the process of leading. Policy setting is the process of protecting. How well led and protected is your school?
Next Step:
Encourage the board to focus only on planning, monitoring, creating policy, and self-management and let the staff handle the rest of the work
Never read the reports during the board meeting (ask questions if clarification is necessary)
Ensure that there is always at least one plan and one policy being created, reviewed, or revised at each board meeting
Annually evaluate the effectiveness of the board based upon changes in the lives of the students, enrollment, donations, and the surplus
Will that guarantee success? No, nothing will. The unexpected always happens. However, if the board follows that simple formula, there will be fewer surprises and less drama when the unexpected happens.
As the board becomes more effective, the school will become more sustainable. The students will have a better experience. Creating an effective board produces benefits that more than justify the effort. If a consultant is needed the benefits (increased enrollment and donations) will justify the cost.
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