Dear School Board – Please Do Better

An open letter to the Decatur, Illinois, District 61 School Board

Nov 01, 2023

You, the members of the school board, by and large, are making your job way too difficult. District 61 has a central administrative staff that makes a combined salary of well over a million dollars a year. Most went to graduate school to train for the job of running a school district and have years and years of experience to prepare them to make decisions to help the students of our district. But you appear to be moving in the dangerous direction past Boards have gone by inserting yourself into day-to-day operations and petty issues where you have no right being involved. The schools are still disentangling our district from past Board overreach when they mandated heterogeneous learning - where all grade-similar students in the district were supposed to be on the literal same lesson page every day. We don’t want to repeat past mistakes! Board members should stay in their lane. Represent the community by moving us in the right direction on broad issues (like a move to one high school, a 3^rd grade reading gate, and a ban on cell phones – but I’m getting ahead of myself.) But the details – negotiating business contracts and trying to make staffing decisions, for example – are not yours! Learn when to step away.

I’m going to include several block quotes in this article, and every one comes from the Illinois Association of School Boards’ Foundational Principles of Effective Governance (emphasis is always mine). Let’s start with this…

The board employs and evaluates one person — the superintendent — and holds that person accountable for district performance and compliance with written board policy.

If you have something you need from any member of the district 61 staff, you should first get the support of your fellow board members. Do not go through anyone else. If the board collectively wants to move forward on your issue, they can give you permission to seek council from your one employee – the Superintendent. Then, and only then, if the Superintendent chooses, she may point you to someone on her staff with whom you may discuss your issue. If you don’t get support along this path, gather more data:

The board constantly monitors progress toward district ends and compliance with written board policies using data as the basis for assessment.

If or when you have additional data to support your cause, feel free to try again. But move forward with your fellow board members first. Privately probably, lest you appear contrary to the broader community that follows the action live on YouTube. Do not start with the attitude that “nobody else understands”. It is probably more likely the case that others simply have different priorities.

And finally, once your action item has been delegated to staff, step back. Give the staff time to work.

Delegation is difficult for anyone accustomed to direct action. However, to appropriately stay focused on the big picture and avoid confusing the staff, members of the school board must discipline themselves to trust their superintendent and staff and not involve themselves in day-to-day operations.

One more thing before I move away from what you should not be doing, to what you should do as a board member. Do not sit out discussions and leave the heavy lifting for others. Read up on the topics being discussed and provide your opinion. If you abstain from a vote, or even a discussion, because you are unprepared, you are failing the constituency that elected you. By now you should have enough knowledge to weigh in on nearly every broad ranging topic that the board faces. Remember your job isn’t to know every single detail of an issue, it’s to move the community in broad directions.

Individual board members are obligated to express their opinions and respect others’ opinions; however, board members understand the importance of abiding by the majority decisions of the board.

Some of you might be asking yourself, if I can’t micro-manage, what can you do? It gets tricky here, but here are three items school boards across the country are grappling with:

1. Discuss at the board level a plan for how you should let the superintendent know that you and the community you represent stand behind her on a cell phone ban in the classroom. Leave the language in the change to the Student Handbook to the professionals in the Central Office. All that is required from the board is to initiate the process. Duane is going to have more about this later, but the only thing the board needs to do is to let the Superintendent know that the community stands behind them on a ban of cell phones in the classroom. This is a small thing for the School Board to initiate; a small step school districts around the country have taken. Florida has enacted a cell phone ban and according to today’s(!) New York Times (Progressives, take note this is the NY Times) the “… cellphone law has found support across the political spectrum.” And if you need more data - according to a 2023 UN report one in seven countries have banned the use of mobile phones in schools. Governments have banned cell phones in schools due to the impact on children's learning in England, France, Netherlands, Finland, Israel, China, Australia, Ontario, Greece, Ghana, Rwanda: and Uganda. Let’s join them and help our students here in Decatur.

2. Begin the difficult conversations about how we are going to realign our schools for our declining enrollment.

As its primary task, the board continually defines, articulates, and re-defines district ends to answer the recurring question — who gets what benefits for how much?

“How much!” That is the only mention of your fiduciary responsibility in the entire “Foundational Principles of Effective Governance” document – but it’s a massive ask! At this point it should be obvious that we should begin planning for one high school and the realignment of the elementary schools to more effectively manage our enrollment. One high school would help broaden our course selection, make ongoing and additional CTE efforts easier to administer, give more access to extra-curriculars, and help with our ongoing teacher shortage issue. Closing one high school also provides a massive opportunity to reimagine our Middle School in Decatur. I have an article on this coming next, but for now suffice it to say that Duane and I imagine a Egan-esque style middle school where activities are as important as the standard curriculum. But I’ll have more on this later.

Additionally, the same type of planning needs to happen for the elementary schools, what schools to keep, what schools to fix, and what schools to close – but don’t get bogged down in the weeds. Read, source, and monitor performance. Let central administration report to you – you DO NOT NEED TO REPORT TO THEM.

A board that does (or re-does) staff work disempowers the staff. High levels of superintendent and staff accountability require high levels of delegation.

After the staff gathers the management data to determine which schools are fine as-is, which should be repaired, which should be closed, your job will be to vote on their proposal. It’s not the other way around.

A distinction should be made between monitoring data (used by the board for accountability) and management data (used by the staff for operations).

Every caring parent from Dennis will tell you that their building shouldn’t close. Don’t be swayed by selection bias. Let’s get the whole picture, discuss, and vote.

3. Look, we’re asking you, the board, to stay out of the weeds and operate at 30,000 feet but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from major decisions.

Ultimately, the school board is responsible for everything, yet must recognize that everything depends upon a capable and competent staff.

There are things that are so important central administration needs the support of the community to effectively move forward. Whether a third-grade student should be retained is a major philosophical issue that requires the board to read, research, gather data, and discuss what successes and difficulties other districts around the country are having implementing this Mississippi styled 3^rd grade reading gate. But, once again, that’s all that needs to be done by the board on this topic. Gather data, talk to your constituents, and form an opinion. Then, you should vote if you want the Superintendent to implement a similar plan.

Unless the board is clear about what it wants, there is no valid way to measure progress and compliance.

Metrics should be defined and agreed upon by the board and the Superintendent and then the effectiveness of the plan (along with the effectiveness of the plan to ban cell phones!) should be part of her yearly evaluation. On a related topic, this solves the problem of whether the district should make a stronger move toward homogenous learning (2^nd grade reading groups, for example). The Superintendent, similar to what other districts have done that have implemented the “gate”, will probably insist on homogeneous reading groups in elementary school to improve the number of kids that pass the 3^rd grade reading test. But leave that for the professionals – the board need not get bogged down in that level of detail!

Those are the three major topics that Duane and I believe the board should be discussing. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. Talk about all of them. Step on board your plane that’s hovering at 30,000 feet.

And finally – read! Stay informed. Gather data – both from within the community and the world. Here are two great articles Duane and I read this week that will be part of our weekly Decatur Public Schools discussion. If you would like to join us to discuss, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

The first is another Substack article…