This piece analyzes how school boards can use superintendent-controlled advisory committees to sidestep open-meeting laws, using the Scottsdale Unified School District's Phase II Design Advisory Team as a case study in governance role ambiguity that undermines public oversight of consequential...
Continue reading →School boards that lack a mutually binding and consistently enforced division of labor between governance and management are prone to escalating conflicts that paralyze district operations and undermine public trust. A pattern vividly illustrated by the repeated closed-door clashes between the...
Continue reading →The democratic theory is seductive: contested elections force candidates to sharpen their positions, put their records before voters, and earn a mandate that gives them standing to govern. But when it comes to school…
Term limits for school board members sound like a clean solution to a messy problem, entrenched incumbents, stale thinking, boards that protect the past instead of building the future. But the governance data tells a…
Most school boards that adopt a monitoring calendar do so with genuine intention, and then spend the next two years receiving reports that feel like compliance theater rather than governance. The calendar exists, the…