Board President Interview and Reflection

 Post to your blog a reflection on the extent to which you find evidence in the interview of best practice within the given standard. How would you (as the superintendent) suggest them to improve?

I had the opportunity to sit down and have a very good conversation with our the president of the Viroqua school board. It was a great opportunity for the both of us to sit down and have a conversation with one another. It provided me the opportunity to learn more about our school board and school boards in general. The school board in Viroqua has been a great board to work for over the past two years, and this interview allowed a behind the scenes view of how our board thinks and operates.  

During the time I spent with Mr. Scott Mills, it was encouraging to hear that there is and has been a focus on a governance model. The Viroqua School Board allows for policies governs what they do. They have been operating under a policy governance for as long as the board president can remember, at least back to 2008 when he became the president.  He has been a board member for the past seventeen years, and when he came on the board did not run very smooth.  As a community member, he felt that the board’s focus was not on educating students and had priorities misplaced.  He stated that the board has come a long way in his time, and part of this was to keep focus on students and empower the superintendent to do what is needed for this to happen.

The board president feels that the board needs to stick to governing and assisting in making decision. The board president recognizes that the board does not have the expertise on education, so they leave those decisions to be made by the superintended who then delegates the responsibilities as needed.  The board president also stated that they control what they can control, but in the end the board does not have as much control as people may think. He stated that boards are tied to what they can and can not do based upon rules set upon them by the state.

The process and means of involving the community seems that this can be an area of improvement in Viroqua. I specifically asked the process of how the district came upon their vision statement, which is “...because children are our future.”  This vision statement came about and was initiated by our current superintendent.  In order to get community input, there was an announcement put out to the community asking for a meeting and input. After this meeting, the superintendent brought the statement to the board, where it was voted upon, it does not sound like the processes that we have been discussing in class.

Reflecting on the interview of our board president and on the topics that we discussed in class, it seems to me that Viroqua is on the road to having a system in place where they empower the superintendent, have a governance structure, has a focus on students, student learning, and educating staff so they are the best that they can be for students. An area of improvement that I would work on as a superintendent would be finding a way to involve the community more and gather their thoughts. If the Viroqua Area Schools are going to represent the diversity of lifestyles in the community, I think that we could do a better job of gathering the communities thoughts and finding out what they value and how to work this into a vision and mission for our school district. In observation over the past two years, I asked our board president how he felt about the lack of community involvement and presence during our monthly board meetings. He stated that he sees the lack of community attendance and involvement as a positive. With members of the community not attending or participating in the board meetings, he stated that those responsible for the events in school are doing their jobs and the community is happy. I understand where he is coming from with this statement and there is a lot of truth to that, however when there is not any community attendance at the board meetings, it leads one to wonder how much the community cares about or values the schools as well.