Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of four articles Tomorrow’s Trust will post in response to the call for papers on “Ontario School Board Governance For The 21st Century“. Each of the four articles will address one of the four “discussion” areas identified in the December 2008 “Consultation Paper” of The Governance Review Committee.  The four papers will constitute Tomorrow’s Trust’s response and will be delivered to the Commission chairs Madeleine Chevalier and Rick Johnson at the roundtable to be held in Thunder Bay, Ontario on February 6^th. 2009.

Questions for Discussion Two:

1. What is effective governance by elected school boards?
2. What would enhance the ability of boards to address local needs within the context of provincially mandated priorities?
3. What governance practices have you seen that work well?
4. What practices and policies support effective governance?
5. Should there be a provincial code of conduct/ethics for school board members or should such a code be developed locally? How should codes of conduct/ethics be enforced?
6. Should boards be required to establish and implement specific policies and procedures to enhance good governance? What would these be?

Discussion 2:

Identifying Effective Governance Practices

By John Borst

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It is important to distinguish between the concept of govern and governance. The latter is the act or process of governing. It is about the power of governing.

To govern, however, is about more than a process. It implies certain conditions are present. Traditionally in education those conditions have included a high degree of sovereign authority, the ability to control one’s actions, the ability to make and administer local policies, and the ability to exercise political authority. As described in “Discussion 1″, it is in this area that school boards have been most constrained. As a result, it is against this backdrop of constraint of authority and autonomy that governance must be considered and evaluated.

Just as with leadership the topic of government or to use its now frequently used term “governance” has been the subject of another small library of books. Currently, society appears to be in a transition away from a form of trustee government where trustees were involved in many aspects of governing such as defining the board’s priorities and raising funds through taxation accordingly; were more frequently than not involved actively in writing board policies and sometimes even procedures; and interviewed not only for the director but the superintendents and in some places principals. Go far enough back and they interviewed for teachers.  Committees, both standing and ad hoc were the preferred mode of operation with the consequence that by the 1990’s directors found themselves with four evening meetings every week of the month. We will call this the “traditional” model. It still exists in many boards.

Against this mode of governance has developed another quote, “more modern version”, which is assuming the mantle of the “governance model”. In this paradigm, the only employee of the board is the director of education. The only committee of the board is the “committee of the whole” board with the exception of those standing committees that are mandated by The Education Act such as the Special Education Advisory Committee. One popular description of this model is that developed by Dr. John Carver, “The model enables the board to focus on the larger issues, to delegate with clarity, to control management’s job without meddling, to rigorously evaluate the accomplishment of the organization; and to truly lead their organization.”

Both models have strengths and weaknesses. The ‘Traditional” model provides trustees with a high degree of comfort and involvement. They get to know the system they are governing on a much more personal level. The majority of new trustees have experience working from this model and can assume their responsibilities quickly and with minimal professional development in that area, especially when the learning curve is so steep in the other areas of the field.

The “Governance” model on the other hand really does do a better job of focusing on the longer term and larger issues; it really does make you think about the relationship between the director as manager and your role in establishing policy. But even more importantly, what else it does do is demand an extremely high degree of trust and respect between the board and the director.

A board, however, can become dysfunctional very quickly, when that trust is, even over a petty item, lost. For the majority of trustees, it also presents a very steep learning curve, one that many do find onerous and confusing. The very simple fact that policies are written in the negative as opposed to the positive is not a simple change to get used to. In one case I worked with the policies had been changed but the board’s Procedural Bylaws had never been changed to reflect the new model with the result that the opportunity to focus on larger issues rarely if ever occurred.

As a result I do not recommend that the commission chose one model over the other, both continue to function well. The decision should rest with each board. They should move when local talent and interest demonstrates that the time is politically right.

Instead if there is one area to which the commission should give more consideration, so as to “enhance the ability of boards to address local needs within the context of provincially mandated priorities” it is in the area of strategic planning.

Even though Carver’s particular governance model puts its focus on ends or outcomes as opposed to means, its greatest weakness is in not addressing how strategic planning works to define the big issues he wants trustees to address.

In my experience strategic planning, not any particular model of governance is the single most important activity that can “enhance the ability of boards to address local needs within the context of provincially mandated priorities”.

And like both the concepts of leadership and governance, strategic planning is replete with its own small library of books.

Unfortunately, some strategic planning processes are not very good, nor are many of the personnel who pass themselves off as strategic planning facilitators. I would postulate there exists a wide range of strategic plans in terms of quality among boards.

Fortunately, during the 2007 – 2008 school year the Ministry of Education completed Operational Reviews of fourteen school boards and confirmed the above hypothesis.

As you no doubt are aware that the Operational Review teams produced in September 2008 a summary of their findings. Also as I am sure you are aware the first area of the review was that of governance.

Of most interest in this regard is that the Operational Review had only one recommendation to make in the area of governance and that one was about Strategic Plans. Because of its importance I will quote it in full:

Practices vary across boards with respect to the development of board strategic directions and the development and reporting of annual improvement plans. …

Improvement Opportunity # 1 Establishment of Strategic Direction and Development and Reporting of Annual Improvement Plans

Overview and Significance

The establishment of a board’s multiyear strategic direction is a critical process, because it provides the framework for all subsequent planning and resource allocation decisions. A board’s annual improvement plan provides the basis for the system to understand current year’s goals/priorities, contributes to the annual budget development process, and provides a specific basis for the director’s reporting to the board of trustees and the public on the year’s achievements against the planned targets.

Expected Practices

The development of a multiyear strategic direction (up to five years) is critical in providing a base on which to develop annual improvement plans. This should be developed after extensive internal and external consultation, and result in a high level summary document available to the public. To enhance understanding, boards should group their objectives under key themes. Some examples include student achievement, accountability, fiscal responsibility, human resources and facilities. Boards should ensure that the strategic direction is widely publicized to all system stakeholders.

Summary brochures, posters and web sites are useful tools to achieve this objective. The director and the senior management team should develop annual plans that define the specific goals/priorities for the current year and are clearly aligned to the board’s overall strategic direction. These documents, usually known as board improvement plans, should define the annual goals and priorities for all academic and non-academic operations of the board. They should also summarize more detailed school improvement plans and individual departmental (finance, human resources and school operations) plans. Planning and reporting templates should be standardized to facilitate planning and the ability to “sum up” individual plans and the reporting of achievements.

Improvement Opportunities from Current Practices

Boards have generally exhibited capability in some, but not all, of the expected practices above.

Most of the boards have extensive processes in place to develop a long term (typically three to five years) strategic direction. Other boards have begun this process but have opportunities to improve its formality and depth. Opportunities include extending the time the strategic directions will cover, and establishing specific and measurable targets and related timelines for the various goals and priorities. These are critical for the development of the annual plans by staff.

There are variations across boards in terms of the structure and content of annual plans and priorities. The most common practice is the development of a board improvement plan, which typically focuses on goals/priorities and targets with respect to student achievement. Boards then develop individual school improvement plans that align to the board improvement plan.

While board improvement plans frequently contain extensive goals/priorities on student achievement initiatives, most boards do not include the goals and priorities for non-academic operations. The reviews also found that most boards have well developed improvement plans for the human resource department, but do not have such plans for the finance and facility departments. There is an opportunity to improve the boards’ total annual planning process by having all departments prepare formalized annual plans that can be incorporated into the annual board improvement plan. This would provide management and the board with a complete understanding of the actions, timelines, accountabilities and measurable targets of the board as a whole, against which to report progress.

There is also an opportunity for boards to adopt a consistent planning framework to develop all plans at the overall board level, the department level and the school level. This would ensure alignment and integration across all levels of planning. Planning frameworks should include, as a minimum, information on goals/priorities, strategies/activities, assigned responsibilities, timelines, indicators of success and a framework for reporting on achievements.

In many ways I would have go further than the PriceWaterhouseCooper and Deliotte teams. My own review has revealed that considerable confusion exists among such concepts as mission, vision, belief statements, goals, strategies, action plans and improvement plans. Even in the above report the use of the term “theme” presents an opportunity for confusion. This is one area where I think school boards could benefit from more uniformity and direction. Thus not only should a board have a consistent planning framework within departments across the system but in my opinion we should have one across the province.

I am also pleased to see that the recommendation includes schools. I would go further and say that the process used to create a high level plan for the board should be replicated at each school.

One other point is important to address with respect to Strategic Planning at the Board and school levels. It is imperative that the creation of a strategic plan or its next cyclical renewal include representatives from all stakeholders including parents, the wider business community and students. When this gets transferred to the school level the empowerment that occurs across the system is significantly greater than that which can be achieved when the plan is designed by trustees and senior administrators alone. The annual review and adjustment process should also bring back the same representatives to create the annual report to the public. It should not be done by the trustees and administrators in isolation.

I am also concerned by the apparent separation of the Board Improvement Plan from the Strategic Plan. This may not have been the Operational Review Teams intent. However, the flow should be more seamless as the actions resulting in “improvement” are actions which grow out of the identified strategic directions and they in turn, only exist because of the two or three system goals each of which in turn should reflect the Board’s mission and beliefs.

In this regard I would ask that you address the lack of a strategic plan from the Ministry of Education. At one time during the Bill Davis era, as Minister of Education, such a plan actually existed. Any vestiges of a global vision for Ontario schools, all but disappeared from view with the Harris Tories. They articulated only one goal “to be competitive in a global economy” nothing more, nothing less.

If this government really wants to see a “board address local needs within the context of provincially mandated priorities” it should develop a clear mission, set of beliefs upon which the mission is built, and clear provincial goals and then articulate the strategies and the actions to get there. Some of the pieces are known and in place but they have never been framed within a Provincial Strategic Plan for education.

If that was in place Boards would then have both a template and body of knowledge within which to create local board strategic plans. Both the public and the profession would then be able to assess the congruence between the two. Similarly when the schools created their strategic plans from the Board plan the flow could be followed back to the Provincial Strategic Plan.

Code of Conduct/Ethics

The issue of a provincial code of conduct/ethics is little more than a momentary red-herring. It is born out of the current period of adjustment in roles, particularly with respect to the loss of sovereignty in the area of finance and curriculum implementation.

As the Minister herself has said elected trustees of education are the longest established local form of government in the Province of Ontario. They have a 170 year history of self management conduct and ethics. Over the long term, they have rarely broken that trust and have demonstrated a high degree of integrity in managing the public purse.

Should the Minister and her government choose to impose a uniform Code of Conduct with the attendant enforcement and appeal provisions that would accompany it, she would be demonstrating a lack of trust that is unwarranted by the history of elected trustees of education and she would no doubt be creating the potential for costly legal proceedings which would be counter-productive to the “common good” of education.

Capital “A” authoritarian solutions in a democracy have a strong tendency to backfire and make matters worse rather than better. One or two dysfunctional examples do not a problem make. Government working “With” such boards rather than “To” such boards is a far better solution than imposing a uniform Authoritarian regime on all boards.

Tomorrow, Discussion Three: Supporting School Board Leaders

The above commentary is the personal opinion of John Borst and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Spiritans, who sponsor the site, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association  (OCSTA) or the Northwest Catholic District School Board, both of which, he is a member.

Discussion 1: Modernizing the Education Act

Discussion 3: Supporting School Board Leaders

Discussion 4: Strengthening School Board Accountability

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