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MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: JUNE 2009 ISSUE
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UNDERSTANDING, CHALLENGING THE WAY A BOARD FUNCTIONS
REAPS DIVIDENDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS (CONTINUED)
BY JAN KRYGIER
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With the economy in a tailspin, an ever-rising tide of paperwork, and one or more sites to oversee, charter school operators have their hands full. So maybe it’s no surprise that establishing and nurturing a functional charter school board isn’t something that tops their “to-do” list. But when a board and administrator can agree on common goals, reach consensus on appropriate functions and duties, and understand their mission as a school, the board ceases to be another bureaucracy and instead becomes an essential part of school success.
The key, as charter school advocate Brian Carpenter pointed out in two days of presentations at the last Arizona Charter Schools Association state conference, is to be clear on the board’s – and the school’s – function and purpose: “The problem is we aren’t telling boards what their purpose is.”
(In last month’s newsletter some dysfunctions of a charter school board were listed. The first two discussed were:
Dysfunction #1: Managing versus Governing
Dysfunction #2: Misappropriating Board Authority.
The article continues:
Dysfunction #3: Creating the Revolving Door
Maintaining stability at the school management level is critical if a charter school is to achieve systemic, sustainable school wide success, according to Carpenter. Unfortunately, it is not something he often sees.
“This is really prevalent, and I’m really worried about this in the charter sector,” he said. “It looks to me like the tenure – and I don’t have any research to back this up right now – but just anecdotally it looks to me like the average tenure of the charter school leader is the about the same as it is in the traditional setting – which is about three years. And I really worry about that for the simple reason that if world-class results are what you have in mind you are not going to achieve that going through a new executive every three years.”
Carpenter added that he has found that the schools that have produced outstanding results have retained their executives for upwards of 14 years.
Dysfunction #4: Wasting Time on “Administrivia”
According to Carpenter, much board meeting time is devoted to “nonsense, among which includes ‘the great sock debate.’”
“And then we wonder why all the research seems to be saying the same thing, which is, on average charter school students perform about the same as their public school counterparts,” Carpenter contends. “It’s because when we’re meeting we’re not even talking about the right things and so therefore there is not an excessive focus on student outcomes at the board level – the highest level of leadership at the school – and a lot gets lost in translation.”
Carpenter suggests that in weeding out “administrivia” a board ask itself two questions:
1. Does it relate to student outcomes?
Does getting our charter renewed hinge on getting this issue right?
Dysfunction #5: The Board’s Failure to Develop Its Own Governance Capacity
According to Carpenter, an engaged board will work to keep informed on current issues by reading books, attending conferences, and pursuing other learning opportunities.
The result of all this, according to Carpenter? Not just an achieving charter school, but an achieving charter school community
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Reprinted from the December 2008 issue of the
Charter School Monthly, www.charterschoolmonthly.org. Used with permission
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