Leveraging Good Governance at a Cabinet Meeting
School Administrator, October 2020

Visualize your next meeting of the superintendent’s cabinet or maybe a gathering of your district’s principals. The agenda of pressing items is in front of you. The heads of offices or schools are sharing their work, successes and current challenges.

Important decisions are being made — about student learning, teacher professional development, school improvement, parent engagement and community partnerships. Now think about how the three central governance questions posed in the accompanying article might guide the conversation.

Listen carefully for how goals have been set, who was involved and how. Are new learning standards not being embraced at one or more schools? Maybe offer advice related to setting meaningful, motivating and nested goals to help staff become more engaged in the work at hand. Maybe using cooperative or consensus governance at the school level would help teachers, as well as students and families, buy into goals.

Has progress toward planned school improvement goals stalled? Revisit what the original plan was, what strategy was set (if there was one). Were regular check-ins built into the work? Ask questions to determine whether the right structures are in place and whether possible partnerships have been forged. Does the plan need to go back to the drawing board?

As the meeting wraps up and there is a discussion about next steps, perhaps be a critical friend pushing the group to consider whether the appropriate activities and amount of labor have been specified. Help people think about how they and you can ensure the right resources and expertise are brought to bear.

In the end, good governance is about good school leadership — at every level, on an ongoing basis. The three guiding governance questions and 10 principles are a concrete foundation on which to not only build a strong school system for the long run. They also are the foundation for building good governance into the everyday work of running great schools.

— EBONY BRIDWELL-MITCHELL