Published: October 02, 2008 02:20 pm            

Commission for School Board Excellence recommendations: Strengthening school boards on the front end

By Phil Jacobs, Gary Price and John Rice



This year, the Clayton County school system made history by becoming just the second school system in the nation to lose its accreditation in nearly 40 years. The last time that happened was 1969, with a school system in Duval County, Fla.

As disheartening as it was, however, the story doesn’t end with Clayton County.

In the past decade, at least one-fifth of all school boards in Georgia have had problems, according to Mark Elgart, president and CEO of AdvancED -- the organization that accredits more than 90 percent of the school systems in Georgia.

If you doubt how important school boards are, consider this: They set the schools’ vision, establish policy and hire the superintendent. And in some cases, they oversee multimillion-dollar budgets.

Recognizing the strong correlation between school board governance and student success, the State Board of Education wanted more than a quick fix. The board wanted reform.

That’s why the state board in April asked the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education and AdvancED to launch a 90-day task force to research national best practices in school board governance.

Our task on the Commission for School Board Excellence was to study the best-performing school boards in the nation -- and figure out what they had in common.

We held meetings around the state to collect research and data. We talked to national and state experts, including the National School Boards Association, the Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) and the Georgia Superintendents Association (GSA), and incorporated many of their recommendations in our report. We read the best case studies and looked for the common themes.

And on Sept. 10, with GSBA, GSA and other stakeholders attending, the commission issued recommendations that are far-reaching, comprehensive and practical.

“If Georgia can adopt most of these suggestions for change, the state will be a model for the nation in school board governance,” Elgart noted.

The final recommendations are directed at improving board elections, qualifications and training so that boards do not get to a point where state intervention is necessary. We do not recommend that the State Board of Education have authority to intervene in a local system unless all local attempts to save the failing system have been exhausted. Even in such cases, the state board, as the entity of last resort, should have only temporary authority to stabilize the system until new local board elections can be held.

Let us be clear. The majority of Georgia’s school boards operate effectively and without serious problems. Intervention should be the very last resort -- an option only in the worst-case scenarios, to keep us from repeating the debacle in Clayton County, where the citizens of Georgia and its leaders were forced to stand with their hands tied behind their backs while the situation deteriorated and students were left to worry for their future.

The bulk of the recommendations are about how to make school boards strong and effective on the front end. These include:

� Creating uniform conflict-of-interest and ethics policies.

� Clarifying the roles of board members and the superintendent.

� Requiring school board candidates to meet minimum qualifications to run and receive capacity-building training once elected.

� Creating nonpartisan elections.

� Limiting boards to no more than seven members.

At the heart of these recommendations is a simple, but important, realization that school board members are unlike many other elected officials.

School board members develop strategic plans that set the tone for student achievement in the system. They must understand education finance and multimillion-dollar budgets. Their service requires specialized skills and ongoing training to fulfill their duties. As such, board candidates should have a high school degree or GED, have an interest in and focus on improving student success, sign an agreement to abide by a code of ethics and conflict-of-interest policy, and be willing to attend training.

While the commission has delivered comprehensive recommendations to the State Board of Education, the work is really just beginning. In 2009, legislation will be introduced at the Georgia General Assembly to move these recommendations into reality.

This is important work. Good school board governance has a direct impact on pupil performance and graduation success -- and in the new economy, 80 percent of jobs will require a two-year technical or four-year college degree. Education is the root of all economic growth, and as business leaders, we must do everything possible to ensure Georgia’s children are ready to compete in the global economy.



The authors are the co-chairmen of the Commission for School Board Excellence: Phil Jacobs, former president of AT&T; in Georgia; Gary Price, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers; and John Rice, vice chairman of General Electric.

        

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