Clarifying Board and Superintendent Roles

School Administrator, March, 2000 by Linda J. Dawson, Randy Quinn

Several Colorado boards have applied Policy Governance to define their parameters and those of the chief executive

Sometimes real life defies explanation. Some realities vary so greatly from logic that we see, but we can't believe. We may even accept, but we can't understand.

Such is the case with school board-superintendent relationships. How can one explain how such seemingly complementary roles can clash so greatly in practice? How can one employing entity so proudly announce to the world its "nearly perfect" choice for superintendent one year, only to see the wheels come completely off within months? What is it about this relationship that makes it seemingly impossible for the people involved to reach common understanding about whose role it is to do what? And why is it that reasonable role definitions are so perpetually elusive?

For most of the 40 combined years we have worked with school boards and superintendents to help them find answers to these nagging and career-threatening dilemmas, we have been as stymied as those caught in this web. We did all the traditional things to help the parties find clarity: We ran retreats and workshops; we created boxes into which we placed all the tasks the board should perform and all the tasks the superintendent should perform; we facilitated the development of mutual commitments and covenants between parties; we played traffic cop, counselor, shrink and adviser.

Still we saw far too many troubled relationships. We knew there were answers, but we couldn't find them. Finally, after careers that featured excessive frustration, we discovered why: We were looking for answers in the wrong places. We were assuming we were dealing with:

* A performance problem. If we could just improve peoples' personal skills and knowledge, and hence their performance, they would work better with each

other.

* An attitude problem. If the boards and superintendents could confront the negative attitudes held by people that prevented positive interaction, things would improve.

* A set of personal problems. Sometimes people just don't like each other. If we could get people to focus on a common, larger vision, they could rally around that and not spend their time dealing with the negative factors that divide them.

The Disclarity Problem

Some truth lies behind all these assumptions, at least in some specific circumstances. But it is now crystal clear to us that the real, underlying problem of board and superintendent relationships is not attributable to any of the above. The real problem is the traditional governance culture in which most school boards try to function. The traditional process of doing board business not only allows role confusion, it causes it. Let us explain.

We typically say the board's job is policy. Really? Bring to mind your school board's last meeting agenda. How many policy decisions did the board make? By comparison, how many decisions were focused on operational issues? (Now for the embarrassing question: Who prepared the agenda that asked the board to make those operational decisions?)

The problem is that when both the board and superintendent share decision-making at the operational level, role confusion should not surprise anyone. Confused roles are an inevitable byproduct of such a process.

We say that the board has only one employee: the superintendent. Yet when we analyze the board's policy manual, we see board policies aimed directly at all employees, not just at the superintendent. The board indeed can control all employees through policy, but it must do so through its only direct employee, the superintendent.

We find that most board policies focus more on operational concerns than on governance concerns, another contributor to role confusion. The fact that a typical school board policy manual consumes a small forest of paper products is evidence of policy aimed at the wrong target. The board can and should state its policy-level concerns in a handful of very broad policies, then leave the administrative detail to that superintendent whose hiring it so proudly announced last year.

Sometimes, in fact, it seems as if the school board and the superintendent have reversed roles. Many superintendents spend more time with policy than their boards do, and many boards deal with operational matters at least as much as the superintendent does. How can role clarity be expected from such confusion?

Policy Reigns

For us, both the problem and the solution became clear with John Carver's publication of Boards That Make a Difference, published in 1990. Carver described the problem just as we had experienced it. He not only identified the problem, but he took the next step by offering the solution, a model he calls Policy Governance (see related article, page 6).

Policy Governance suggests that every decision a board makes should be a policy-level decision. The model provides that only four kinds of policies are necessary for the board to fully express its unique values for the organization. These four categories of policies are: