School Board receives tips on better management tactics

Terry Webster

Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

A new management concept approved by the Clark County School Board aims to reduce meddling by parents and micro-management by individual board members.

The board, at a meeting today, is expected to formally adopt "Policy Governance," a formula for setting and achieving goals.

According to consultants John and Miriam Carver, Policy Governance limits outside interference and micro-managing that are the hallmarks of virtually every governing board.

Policy Governance allows boards to set goals and monitor whether they are reached, said Miriam Carver, who held a workshop presentation Tuesday before an audience of more than 300 persons at the MGM Grand Conference Center.

And instead of telling the superintendent how to achieve the goals, the board will tell him what he can't do. For example, laws, ethics and available funding must not be compromised when working toward goals, Carver said.

The Atlanta-based couple are published authors and nationally known for their consulting expertise in effective board governance.

Superintendent Carlos Garcia said he likes the concept and thinks it will enable him to effectively do his job.

"I'm sold on it," Garcia said. "And I'm the person the board holds the most accountable. But that's OK."

Under Policy Governance, the board as a whole has power, but individual board members have none.

"If a board seriously intends to speak with only one voice, it must declare that the staff can safely ignore advice and instructions from individual trustees, that only the explicit instructions of the board must be heeded," John Carver wrote in an article titled "Remaking Governance."

He maintains the concept is not intended to limit the right of individual board members to speak their minds.

"In short, trustees who disagree with the vote may continue to say so, but may not influence organizational direction," Carver wrote.

Some audience members doubted whether the School Board could effectively ignore requests from the community to get information or delve into various district affairs.

Miriam Carver said it is not the School Board's job to sort out complaints. She also said it's crazy for people to address the School Board with complaints during board meetings and suggested the board "teach" the public it is improper.

That comment drew applause from the audience.

In his article, John Carver also defines the role of parents.

"Another mistake is behaving as if the parents are the system's owners and that the board is their representative ... Both politics and logistics induce boards to act as if parents own the system," he wrote. "Parents might resist losing any part of this role, but public policy will benefit by facing the fact that parents, as parents, do not own the public schools. Parents are owners by virtue of being part of the public, but they only constitute a percentage, not the whole."

Policy Governance even outlines how the board will act. The board president will be responsible for making sure the board acts according to its own rules, a draft policy states.

A draft policy on the conduct of board members outlines how the board will interact with the public, press and other groups.

It states that members "must recognize the same limitation of and inability of any board member to speak for the board except to repeat board decisions."

Another section of that policy states that board members will "respect the confidentiality appropriate to issues of a sensitive nature."

During the program, several people in the audience said it was not holding their interest.

"I'm sure a lot of these people would have rather been in their schools," Garcia said. "But this is something that has a trickle-down effect."

The board today will review how to implement Policy Governance.