| To School Board 227 and our District 227 Community As leaders, our job is to improve student achievement levels and to productively engage the school district community to achieve this goal. As a school board, our job is also to inform, motivate our community in our district vision toward educational excellence, improving student achievement performance, and to inspire. In April 2009, my first year on the school board, I had recently come fresh from the ranks of the graduate schools in higher education as Associate Professor in Educational Administration and Supervision teaching principals and superintendents who had returned to graduate school to obtain Masters and Ph.D.'s in Educational Leadership. At the same time, I noticed that most board 227 members didn't understand their role and the significant and powerful duties that they should demonstrate as board members, but weren't, to improve student achievement levels. Rather, they were focused on all the wrong things that were illegal and what was selfish and unlawful to be done: Speech suppression, injustices done to our children and community, still did not rightly recognize and value the duty of our roles in addressing district goals and improving student achievement levels; belittling the emasculating, dehumanizing and ineffective effects of lack of community and full board participation, and violating our freedom of speech. Board work is, well, work. To do just an average job, we must commit ourselves to a healthy school improvement diet of reading to inform ourselves in our school leaders role as board members and Roberts Rule of Parliamentary Procedure, to know and understand our roles, rights, and responsibilities as school board members. To do a great job, we need to understand our roles, know our rights and responsibilities and what effective school boards do to make a difference, what we can do and what we should not be doing, as found in the KEY WORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDES BOOK, published by the National School Boards Association. By doing so, we will empower ourselves through knowledge but never waste more time engaging in nonsense and trying to control everything and everyone. Rather, we must focus on what we should be doing to control and direct ourselves, understanding our significant and important role and what we should be doing, engaging in a focused positive educational vision for our school district, and not merely wasting more time in community debauchery, speech suppression, and in the thick of thin things. Today, we are bigger than what we have seen in the past. We need to be more proactive and focused on what is valuable and understanding what is worthless, and, therefore, not waste more precious time in our efforts toward improving the academic, instructional, and fiscal integrity of our school district. In short, we need to follow the laws of the Illinois Open Meetings Act, and the laws of our country (the U.S. Constitution). Never again can we allow to happen what has already happened in our school district over the past twenty years. That's why instituting an accountability-data-driven evaluation system and the laws and rules of effective school board policies and parliamentary procedure in the areas of academics, policy, finance, and community participation, are so significant. To move our school district into the twenty first century and to restore educational excellence, democracy, fair policies, and fiscal integrity, the new school board has approved three working board committees: (1) A Continuous Improvement in Accountability Evaluation Committee to hold ourselves accountable. The KEY WORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDEBOOK is focused on student achievement. The purpose of the KEY WORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDEBOOK is to help effective school boards engage their communities and improve student achievement levels through effective governance. Effective governance is more than running a school board meeting in a fair, judicious, and equitable manner. It is also informing, motivating, and inspiring the community to support a school district's vision. (2) A Board Policies Committee to institute fair rules and to better understand the roles, duties, and parliamentary procedures of effective school boards, and (3) A Finance Committee to monitor our district's finance to insure that all school improvement funds are spent to educate our children. Last school year, following two school board members, who were traditionally shut down at open board meetings, and the National School Boards Association's suggestions, the superintendent ordered this book over a year ago to be used by the school board to empower it. As a school board, we need to read the KEY WORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDEBOOK that Board chair Cheryl Coleman and David Morgan, based on its need and urgency, recommended to be purchased for the whole school board over a year ago. At this time, since there was no emphasis placed on school board knowledge, school improvement, assessment, accountability, and board empowerment inherent in acquiring knowledge in school board and district evaluation, assessment, and student improvement, no one ever heard of this empowering book since that time, and any discussion in our attempts to address its significance at open board meetings were denied. This is the same recommended booklet containing only 98 pages that is provided for purchase at all annual National School Boards Association Conventions in the United States and at the Annual Illinois Association of School Boards Convention at the Hyatt Regency Chicago in November. School board members are charged by law with providing quality education for the school district. Today, the new school board can seize this once in a life time opportunity to make history and leave a legacy of integrity, restoration of democracy, our continuing essential full board and community participation levels that we have seen since the new school board took it seat in May 2013, educational excellence, and school achievement at the highest possible levels. The purpose of the KEY WORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDEBOOK is to illustrate how effective boards engage the full board and their communities to improve student achievement levels. Today, we especially value and need the community's vision, caring, feedback, intelligence, input, suggestions, participation, and support. Without it, we cannot succeed. With it, we cannot fail. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., Educational Leadership School Board Member Rich Township High School District 227 Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461 Email: davidemorgan234567@sbcglobal.net |
