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Revised (Dec 15 2009)
What boards do in broad terms
As our democracy rests on public education, so should a significant part of the governance of public education rest locally with elected boards of education. Public education governance is the act of transforming the needs, wishes and desires of the community into policies that direct the community’s schools.
First and foremost, governance is the prerogative of the board of education as a whole. No individual school trustee or group of trustees has any authority or power unless expressly directed by the board as a whole. The board of education ensures that schools operate in accordance with both local interest and with provincial laws and regulations. There is a complementary balance between the broad provincial interest and local community interest in our schools, requiring a sharing of governance between boards of education and the provincial government.
Locally, in order to define the public interest—the board’s vision of what the schools ought to achieve—the board of education is obligated to assimilate the diverse values, interests and expectations of all people in the school district. The board of education combines its understanding of public perception with the professional knowledge of the district educators, primarily the superintendent, to make decisions on the direction of school operations. These decisions take the form of district plans, policies and budgets—all of which need to be aligned in order to achieve the vision for public education.
In its decision-making, the board of education is democratically obligated to report continuously to the people—the owners of public education and on whose behalf the board of education is acting to improve student achievement. The essential job of governance is to resolve the differences and choose courses of action that will be supported initially by a sufficient number of trustees and ultimately by the education partners (district officials, principals, teachers, unions and parents) and the larger community. Bringing all of these groups and individuals together is what makes it possible for schools to move forward and achieve a better education for all students.
In this sense, governance is politics — a public debate and a constant process of creative compromise between both values and interests. The people decide every three years at election time whether the board of education has adequately defined their interests in schools and if the board’s decisions have resulted in acceptable educational outcomes for students.
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Key work of boards of education
