San Diego Board of Education member
John
Rationale for Change

Introduction
The traditional model for governing Urban Schools includes an elected board of education. The board generally consists of an odd number of members elected in alternate election years for four-year terms. In San Diego the board consists of 5 trustees, elected by the community at large from persons selected by geographic districts in primary elections. The lettered districts (A-E) are established according to Federal and State election laws and cover specific precinct boundaries. These districts are redrawn after each Federal Census to meet representation guidelines of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

Duties of the Board
The most important duties for an elected board are to set educational policies for the school district and to select the superintendent. There are considerable other duties set by State Law including setting annual budgets, approving personnel selection, ratifying contracts, approving curriculum, setting graduation requirements, selecting school sites, approving construction contracts, and much more.

The Governance Problem
Nationally the average tenure of urban superintendents is fairly short (2-3 years), and the pool of qualified individuals is declining. This can be attributed to many factors including the political volatility of elected boards of education, and the inability of one person to have the range of skills needed to run a complex educational enterprise.

A school superintendent is involved in recommending multiple controversial educational decisions...mainly centered on raising student achievement, deciding major real estate and construction operations, managing business affairs and finances, and maintaining the confidence of the elected board in all these areas. It is true that an "ideal" superintendent would be surrounded by a cadre of experts to assist in the day-to-day operations of the school district. A cabinet of these experts could effectively provide a superintendent with a set of balanced options and choices to meet strategic political and financial realities. For “ideal” superintendents it would be expected that the pros and cons of controversial high profile decisions would be shared with board members prior to immediate public presentation to build consensus. Assumptions of blanket support for changes because of board confidence in their selected superintendent are not supported by recent urban history. When the political heat rises, boards are changed, or they rethink their support for the superintendent.

Many factors cause the "ideal" to be illusive. But one of the most important of these is the process of selecting a superintendent. Boards of education are selected by their community for their political views or because of their apparent interest in community service. When they select a superintendent they may rely on the candidates past performance in education, successes in other enterprises, their charisma and ability to perform in interviews, apparent political support ...or a mixture of these and other factors.

Unlike big business, the pool of successful educational leaders is extremely limited. So the recent trend is to hire successful individuals from outside of education and assume that their skills will "transfer" to public education. In fact, there is a new cottage industry set up by rich philanthropists to train potential superintendents to reform education. Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, USC and other renowned institutions are not ignoring the influence of these wealthy foundations, as they are major suppliers of support for their schools of business and/or education. Universities and their research fellowships pay attention to foundation dollars as much as politicians follow campaign contributions!

San Diego had one of the first urban school district experiences with a foundation-supported superintendent. Alan Bersin, an experienced prosecuting attorney, was selected in 1998. Multi-million dollar grants were given by the Gates, Broad, Hewlett, and Atlantic Foundations to support the district and Bersin's "reforms" on the "condition" that he would remain employed as the superintendent. It is unproven whether or not their influence may have been part of the selection process.

His stormy tenure has shaken the San Diego School District and he recently announced he would not seek a contact extension when it expires in two years.

So what has been learned in San Diego and what alternatives are there to urban school governance?

My Viewpoint:
I believe that we have confirmed the fact that the job of an urban superintendent is too complex for one individual. I feel certain that maintaining district operational continuity is a high priority, even with superintendent changes; and that other urban districts have shown that outstanding educational competence may not bring management efficiency. It has also been demonstrated by experiments in business (Built to Last) that a charismatic personality may not provide the essential skills needed for successful management performance.

Another Concept:
An urban board can continue down the path of seeking the "ideal" superintendent… a superman who can do everything. Or, it can seek to discover an alternative organizational plan that selects highly competent specialists to control critical components of the district operations. This alternative plan may require collaborative management to bring various divisions of the district into synchrony. This educational model is untried and requires a board that is willing to make itself more accountable for decisions.

The model proposed is not an off-the-shelf plan from some organizational textbook. It requires an intellectual belief in democratic decisionmaking that places the elected board in the position of being the swing vote in major decisions. It can work if the board becomes informed, critical thinkers who delegate all operational matters to a management committee, and only becomes involved if the committee cannot fully agree. Then, the board becomes informed decision-makers and publicly accepts responsibility for their actions.

DESCRIBING A MODEL

The board would identify a number of organizational divisions. I suggest no more than five. The best experts in their field that the board could find would head these divisions. The division sub-organization would be similar to existing ones, but would be organized and managed by the division manager who would be fully accountable to the board for operations.

Examples proposed for San Diego City Schools:

  1. Business Services Director (CBO)
  2. Facilities Director (CFO)
  3. Superintendent of Instruction (CIO)
  4. Chief Accountability Officer (CAO)
  5. Human Resources Officer* (CPO)

Each of these Officers would be directly responsible to the Board of Education and would have the requirement to reach consensus on their operational and policy decisions. When any one of them feel that a proposed policy or decision would have adverse effects on the mission of San Diego City Schools, they should be able to express their concerns to the board and get the board to understand the issue and make the final decision.

In the conceptual plan presented on my web site, I have integrated personnel/human resources within the four divisions because of the shorter response time possible for meeting identified staffing requirements. If the board decides otherwise, then transferring the personnel functions back to Human Resources can easily be done by establishing a Human Resources Division with its own Director as listed above.