What Does a School Board Member Do?
Responsibilities of a Board Member
With school children always their ultimate focus, school board members act officially at the board table, working with other board members to serve students and accomplish the following:
- Create a shared vision for the future of education
- Set the direction of the school district to achieve the highest student performance
- Provide rigorous accountability for student achievement results
- Develop a budget and present it to the community, aligning district resources to improve achievement
- Support a healthy school district culture for work and learning
- Create strategic partnerships with the community stakeholders
- Build the district’s progress through continuous improvement
- Adopt and maintain current policies
- Hire and evaluate the superintendent
- Ratify collective bargaining agreements
- Maintain strong ethical standards
Characteristics of a Board Member
Below are attributes that all effective board members should possess:
- Effective Communicator: Can describe what he or she wants and describe what others want; a good listener
- Consensus Builder: Capable of working toward decisions that all can support and willing to compromise to achieve goals
- Community Participant: Enjoys meeting a variety of people, can identify the community’s key communicators and reaches out to the community
- Decision Maker: Is comfortable making decisions and can support group decision-making
- Information Processor: Can organize priorities and schedules to handle large amounts of verbal and written information
- Leader: Willing to take risks, be supportive of board colleagues, district staff and community
- Team Player: Helps promote the board