District planning is one of the most important tasks your board can perform. Developing a vision, and adopting goals and priorities for the district, sets the course and keeps the district moving in a positive direction.

Truly effective boards often refer to their district’s vision and goals when preparing for meetings or making decisions. Developing a strong vision and goals helps a board have a North Star to refer back to when it’s time to make tough decisions. Vision and goals keep school governance focused on top priorities like student achievement.

Research on effective school governance points to two board functions with a strong connection to student achievement:

• The board holding high expectations for student learning and communicating those expectation through the district’s vision and goals
• The board staying engaged with the student learning goals through regular goal progress monitoring

To that end, the board reviews regular reports from the administration on district operations and progress toward goals. Some goals in your district may be stated in terms of measures included in the state’s Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR).

TAPR can help your district gauge student achievement and other districts measures. It helps your district compare its performance to other districts and campuses of similar size, wealth, and student populations.

A key responsibility of the board is to adopt local policies that guide how the district operates. Your administration and district staff make important decisions based on district policies. Local school boards must adopt policies that are consistent with federal and state laws and regulations and should ensure they match district practice.

Your district’s policy manual will have two types of policies (Legal and Local) in many areas.

• Legal policies contain any statements of state or federal law or other legal authority on a topic and are not adopted by the board
• Local policies include governance provisions that the local board has put in place

By distinguishing these two, the board and the public can clearly see what part of district operations are mandated by state and federal law, and which are adopted at the board’s discretion.

Learn the basic steps to developing and adopting school district policy and find out the difference between school board policies and regulations.

The board sets goals and priorities and adopts the policies by which the district is run. The board also hires a superintendent to execute on the board’s decisions.

The role of the superintendent is to:

• Act as chief executive officer of the district
• Ensure that the board’s policies are implemented fairly and appropriately
• Move the district forward on the board’s goals and priorities
• Be accountable for the progress made toward successful school operations

While the board’s focus is oversight of management, policymaking, planning, and evaluation, the superintendent's focus is on implementation and managing day-to-day operations.

The board must also develop superintendent performance goals and evaluate the superintendent’s progress. Read more about how to conduct a superintendent evaluation.

The school board’s role in adopting a budget is an ongoing activity. The superintendent and staff crunch the numbers for the school district budget and present it to the board for approval.

So, when it comes to the school district budget, what does the school board do?

• Review and approve a calendar for the budget preparation cycle
• Examine budget assumptions, broad guidelines and targets that administration uses in preparing a budget
• Study the budget proposal to make sure it reflects the goals and priorities the board established
• Hold required public hearings
• Adopt a budget and approve an appropriate tax rate to fund it
• Monitor the district’s fiscal activity throughout the year and amend the budget if necessary
• Hire an independent auditor and approve the report from the annual financial audit

School board members who want to exercise responsible stewardship of district finances should be armed with two tools:

• Basic information about the district’s budget, so they can anticipate the district’s revenue profile in coming years
• A habit of asking about the long-term fiscal impact of board decisions, so they can begin to understand the complexities of budget decision and avoid making decisions that put the district in a difficult position down the road

Find out the right questions to ask about your school district’s budget.

Your board’s final major responsibility is to serve as an advocate for public schools. One of the key things trustees can do is to listen to their community. It’s one of the best ways for trustees to build trust between the district and community.

Keep your community involved by informing them about:

• Districts plans
• Actions
• Accomplishments

Board members are the link between the school system and the public. As advocates for public education, board members help grow community support for public schools and report district progress by communicating with the community, students, staff, parents, and the media.

Once your board makes a decision, the board’s role is to engage the community in ways that:

• Promote continued constructive discussion
• Generate positive community interest in the efforts of the public schools

The intention of the Lone Star Governance two-day workshop is to create a supportive space in which governing teams can learn about and can prepare for the commitment to intensely focus on improving student outcomes as described by the Lone Star Governance Integrity Instrument. The workshop is a conversation about researched school board behaviors that improve student outcomes. The Workshop draws from the participants’ respective experiences and their school’s performance. The underlying belief is that leadership matters and that leaders’ choices have the power to be transformative in the lives of our students.

Lone Star Governance Coaches are committed to providing continual coaching and support to school boards as they work to implement the behaviors that have been shown to increase student outcomes. The continual engagement between a school board and coach has been shown to make the difference in successful implementation to improve student outcomes.

The Lone Star Governance workshop earns School Boards and individual board members continuing education training credit. When all members attend the LSG Workshop, school boards earn credit to satisfy the required annual Team Building, bi-annual Evaluating and Improving Student Performance, additional annual Framework Hours, and earn a School Board LSG Certificate. School Boards, through continual engagement with an LSG Coach, will be supported with all required training and the implementation of best practices to improve student outcomes.