I still remember walking into Northview’s boardroom in Grand Rapids 18 years ago, fresh off the election and eager to become more involved with my local school system. Having three kids in school gave me a feel for the community’s thoughts and ideas, and I was anxious to see how this could provide me with insight as a new trustee. I was already a proponent of using data, as I was a partner in a firm that used performance analytics with medical groups across the country. I was excited to see what types of data were available for schools to use, and what our board was already using.
Luckily, our seasoned board was already using data to monitor our district’s progress toward meeting our mission and strategic goals. In fact, I was delighted to see how our board spent most of its time discussing and refining our high-level goals and then monitoring our superintendent’s performance toward those goals. This made so much sense to me, as I was no expert in the field of K-12 education (nor am I now, even after 18 years on the board), but I could understand the goals and follow the data to see if we were meeting them. I remember thinking, wow – what a wonderful way to run a school district. I have since seen this process work time and time again, allowing each of the superintendents during my tenure to use their deep knowledge in education and work with their team on strategies to meet the mission and goals set by the board.
But how does a board get to this point? How does a board even gain consensus that this is the best way to run a district and then put in place the cornerstones that make this work? For our board, it was the visionary board members before me who understood that our role was at the highest level, and our three main jobs were to hire the superintendent, work together with our superintendent to set our mission and strategic goals, and then monitor and evaluate their performance. But what if a board doesn’t have that history? Where does a board even start?
