Letter to the Editor: School Board Uses June Retreat to Identify Priorities

The ISD 199 School Board, like many other school boards, used some time this summer for a board retreat. 

When you have three new board members at one time, which has not happened in over nine years, we needed some time to become familiar with our roles and each other.

The retreat was in June and five out of the seven members were present. The other two board members were brought up to speed at a separate work session in August.  

The morning was spent with a communications consultant educating the board on what the political season would look like for a school district to put an item on the ballot this November. 

The board had a strategic referendum discussion and even though the need has not gone away for technology funding, Inver Grove Heights Community Schools will not seek any referendums this fall. 

The afternoon was spent with a different consultant from Big River Consulting Group, and the goal was for board members to get to know each other while learning the roles and responsibilities of both board members and administrators. 

This session was strategic planning in a few hours versus months and months of meetings. The board reviewed research that showed qualities of effective school boards and effective schools. 

For example, board members need a conviction to public education, the ability to communicate well with others and time and energy to devote to board business. School board members need to stay at 30,000 feet when making decisions and leave the day-to-day operations to the people who run the schools on a day-to-day basis, i.e. superintendents, principals, teachers, custodial staff, etc.

Through a method called "Chainsaw Planning," we listed recent successes and issues in the district. We then narrowed to 11 categories that seemed to be priorities. 

The next step was to take the top four and work through what we're doing well and how we can make it even better. (For example) What can the school board do to support or increase support for that priority? On that particular day we went through one of the priorities, and have since finished the remaining three. 

We simply needed practice in using the tools to see what we wanted to accomplish, where to begin and what we should see happening as we improve. The four categories we walked through were:

• Communication & planning
• Enhancing morale, staff empowerment & support
• Learning styles: Personalized or individualized learning plans for ALL students
• Student achievement & curriculum mapping

These four areas fit well within current Vision and Mission Statements of the district (http://www.invergrove.k12.mn.us/mission.html). Therefore, we are continuing to build the knowledge of board members and our roles. 

The board members are working at a 30,000 foot view enabling our administrators to take our benchmarks and come back to us with plans to accomplish these. 

We also worked through how we would be able to evaluate our work as a school board using the same tools we used for the priorities.  

Often times as board members, we are asked about day-to-day tasks or concerns for particular issues during parking lot conversations; we need to listen, but we also need to stay focused on the larger picture, or 30,000 foot view. 

For example, a particular classroom project or assignment should not be our focus but rather the path that's being taken for a student to reach their academic goals. 

We had a very informative discussion about personalized student learning and what tools are available for students to set goals, collect examples of their work and demonstrate learning. 

The challenge we as board members face is how can we make those resources available for ALL students to accomplish this.  

Cindy Nordstrom
ISD 199 School Board Chair

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