We’ve heard a lot about publicly elected boards of education lately. OK so it was just one, but I’m also curious about charter boards of directors. Maybe some charter school folks would comment.
As the Denver Green School Partnership took shape, we considered applying for a charter. There were several reasons we decided on a different path but among them was our concern about recruiting and retaining a productive board of directors. We’ve heard stories about boards turning and driving a school into the ground or turning it into something alien to its original purpose.
On the other hand, I have to imagine that high functioning charters have a productive, or at least not destructive relationship with their boards.
Maybe some of the stories are overstated or even apocryphal. Maybe it happens rarely enough that it need not dominate planning for probable futures. We are involved in defining our governance model and I’m very interested in how different approaches play out in practice. I guess my interest is mostly academic since, as I mentioned, we’re already well down another path.
But it’s something I think it’s very important to wonder about. I believe the quality of the adult interactions around a school and the quality of the interactions between adults and kids have a profound and mutual impact on each other.
An important finding from complex systems theory shows that analogous patterns of interaction appear at different levels of organization. That suggests that if we want teachers and students to have respectful, differentiated and optimally developmental relationships, we should establish the same conditions in our adult interactions.
To say that it’s the culture I think misses the opportunity to investigate a variable we don’t know a whole lot about. Governance should provide structure to facilitate the desired culture rather than demand it and create an uphill battle to get it. It should be the path of least resistance (that’s not to say it’s not work to move down that path) rather than pushing a rock up a hill.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Jeff…
It’s a little known fact that, back in 2001, the Denver School of Science & Technology was originally proposed to DPS as a pilot school…an idea the district quickly rejected.
Fast forward to 2004…by then, DSST not only had its charter approved but had obtained voter support for $5 million in bond funding for its $15 million Stapleton facility. Jerry Wartgow asked me to reconsider going the pilot school route, but when I told him all the waivers we would need from existing district policies he chuckled and said “go be a charter.”
In retrospect, I think we were quite fortunate to go the charter route. The thing to always keep in mind when doing a start-up school is that it is not what the school looks like when it opens…it’s what it looks like 10 years down the road. And I would strongly argue that the charter structure, when well executed, offers a much greater chance of long term success and sustainability for a school.
Why? Autonomy and advocacy.
Let’s take advocacy first. The weakness in the contract school structure is that, because there is no independent board, there is no equivalent external advocate for the interests of the school. While the start-up team, like yours, may be passionate, highly energetic and talented, sooner or later some of that group moves on to other things. As a result, sustaining the momentum and culture becomes a huge challenge, particularly since the ground rules of running a public school (district or charter) seem to change on an almost monthly basis.
This becomes even more problematic when the district leadership changes, either because the superintendent moves on and/or because the composition of the school board changes. People have short memories, commitments are forgotten or subject to revisionist history, budgets are cut and mandates increased. All of a sudden some of the key components of success are being taken away, and there’s relatively few ways to push back.
That’s where an independent board comes in. Their mandate and fiduciary obligation is to represent the interests of the school…the students, faculty and administration that populate the school and the taxpayers who are paying for it…even if it may be in conflict with the ever-changing priorities of the district.
Without that advocacy, and quite often the sophisticated experience of the board in handling controversy, a contract or pilot school finds itself at considerable disadvantage.
A case in point was a very successful semi-autonomous district school in Texas whose principal was a colleague of mine. When she moved on to a different assignment in the district the school fell apart. Her conclusion was that she hadn’t been able to create a sufficiently strong management culture to withstand and respond to the district bureaucracy.
She subsequently opened a successful “early college” district high school. Since she couldn’t create a charter, she built an “Advisory Board” that in many respects reflected a similar advocacy model as a charter board. But the punch line is that she ultimately ended up choosing to work for a nationally respected non-profit charter management organization.
Which brings me to the second advantage of charters…more autonomy.
Simply put, no matter how well the initial contract is written between a pilot school and district, it is not as autonomous as a charter…and years down the road, the flexibility that a charter has, particularly in terms of financial decision making, allows it to roll with the punches.
Obviously, all this is premised on the assumption that the charter has a high-performing board, is ethical, adheres to best practices, and so forth. In the case of DSST, we’ve been very fortunate, both in terms of the commitment of our board to the success of the endeavor, and the talents they have brought to the table. We’ve also been fortunate to have a constructive and collaborative relationship with DPS.
Our goal, from Day One, was to attract and serve students who normally did not attend high performing science and math programs…in particular, girls and students of color.
Our Founding Board represented those populations. Five of the first seven were female, three were people of color, and five had degrees in engineering or computer science. In terms of careers and values, our board reflected the kids we wanted to serve and what we wanted our kids to become. Our board has never waivered in its commitment to diversity, high expectations for all students and a strong institutional culture based on shared values.
Seven years later, five of these founding members still serve on our expanded board, giving us enormous institutional memory and experience, as well as substantial credibility with foundations, government entities and other stakeholders.
It is a major strategic benefit.
Good luck on your start-up!
David Ethan Greenberg
Founder
Denver School of Science & Technology
David,
Thanks. I hope the Innovation Schools law has given us a tool to help improve memories when it comes to sticking to what we have agreed to do. We’re working on a waiver application that if approved, should get us closer to charters in terms of autonomy – closer but not all the way there.
The advocacy issue is an interesting one. I have always thought of the role of a BoD strictly in terms of holding an organization accountable. That may be a result of my lack of experience with high functioning Boards. Your remarks remind me that someone else was recently talking to me about this aspect of a BoD’s work. I sort of thought oh yeah, they could do that but found it unlikely because I have been focused on negative Board behavior in charters.
It occurs to me that most of the district schools out there have nothing like the advocacy you describe (since not all boards are high functioning, I think many charters probably don’t either). Given that we want all kids to learn, I wonder how that level of focused support could be brought to more schools (of all types) without creating new bureaucracy or other policy knots.
Thanks for the encouragement. You’ve given us some things to think about for sure.