What effective school boards get right

Over the next several months, high-profile political races will command the public’s attention. But one set of races at the local level might be just as consequential: local school board elections.

Too many of us are flying blind when making school board ballot decisions. Few of us can say we regularly attend our local school board meetings (and those that do rarely represent the larger community). There is little research about school boards and limited public understanding of what the role of a school board entails. Although it seems like there are more news stories about school boards than ever before, those accounts unfortunately focus on disruption and dissension. Tales about recent recall votes, a fight about which books to teach, or a board meeting turning violent reveal that many school boards have become battlegrounds for political issues beyond K-12 education.

Now is an opportune time to build greater awareness of what school boards do and the positive impact of effective governance. Fortunately, there are strong examples from which we can learn. The California Collaborative on District Reform released a case study of two California school districts — Napa Valley and San José Unified School Districts — with strong reputations among peer superintendents as having highly functional superintendent–school board relations. The case study illuminates the kinds of practices governing teams in other districts can adopt and the general public can reward in their voting.

Commit to shared priorities. The pressures facing school districts — including from the pandemic, educator shortages, a daunting fiscal outlook, and others — are more intense than at any time in recent memory. These pressures often lead districts to fragment their work or, in an attempt to address every concern, do none of them well. In San José Unified and Napa Valley Unified, the governing teams orient their work around a shared mission, vision and values that help create focus and coherence in what could otherwise be an overwhelming environment. Both districts illustrate that school boards and their communities can work toward a shared vision more effectively with clearly defined priorities.

Establish and embrace norms for behavior. Just as important as what a governing team does is how it does its work. Napa Valley Unified and San José Unified both commit to shared norms for working together that keep them accountable for acting in the best interests of their communities. These norms include treating each other with respect, clearly defining what their role does and does not entail, and embracing a commitment to sharing information transparently. The norms help them maintain focus, navigate disagreement in healthy ways, and model behavior that districts seek to develop in their students.

Invest in early and recurring onboarding experiences. November elections will shift the composition of the governing teams in many districts, which can potentially undermine the commitment to both priorities and norms. To avoid this, newly elected trustees in San José Unified and Napa Valley Unified undergo district-specific onboarding processes that include one-on-one meetings with the superintendent and members of the central office and a California School Boards Association (CSBA)-facilitated Good Beginnings workshop to form relationships with one another and co-develop norms for how they will work together. A strong onboarding experience fosters role clarity, establishes a foundation for the governing team to work collaboratively, and communicates to constituents what the school board role involves and how it can best serve the community.

Lean on internal commitments to navigate challenges. The two districts’ strong sense of role clarity and their commitment to priorities and norms allow them to better navigate periods of struggle. Representatives from Napa Valley Unified described the painful decision to close schools in 2019 and 2021; San José Unified governing team members recalled an intense series of votes about police presence on school campuses. These difficult experiences tested the governing teams’ norms and values, but board members reported they would have been much harder without the practices, processes and commitments they had made prior.

This fall, voters will determine who represents them in crafting local school policy.

Now is the time for district leaders, trustees and voters to ask themselves some critical questions: Do members of my community understand what the work of the school board entails? Do they understand what a commitment to problem-solving enables the district to do? And will their voting reflect those kinds of behaviors and commitments?

By building awareness, fostering understanding, and equipping voters to make informed decisions on behalf of their communities, we can help cultivate governing bodies that will prioritize problem-solving over dysfunction, compromise over grandstanding, and student needs above all.

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Joel Knudson is a principal researcher at American Institutes for Research and the chair of the California Collaborative on District Reform, a learning community of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and funders dedicated to improving instruction and student learning for California’s school systems.

Marina Castro is a research analyst at American Institutes for Research, a nonpartisan and not-for-profit social science research organization, and a staff member of the California Collaborative on District Reform.

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