Do a google search.  It doesn’t take long after typing in the words “school board meetings gone wrong” to discover just how many school board meetings really have gone wrong over the past year.  Here are just a few of the headlines from the articles, “The Increasingly Wild World of School-Board Meetings”, “School board meetings have gotten heated;”, “To end angry school board meetings…” and finally from the Washington Post, “School board meetings used to be boring.  Why have they become war zones?”  By the way, those headlines were posted on Oct 8th, Oct 24th, Oct 26th, and Sep 29th respectively.  I could have easily shared more headlines but I’m pretty sure you get the idea.  Board meetings are not for the faint of heart in this time of “heightened public engagement.”  

 

Rather than use this blog to talk about the public, or the crisis of the moment driving the public outcry, I’m choosing to focus on two things that every board has the ability to control.  Every school board can control their effort to create greater closure and increased brokerage.  Closure and brokerage?  What do either of those words have to do with board meetings gone wrong?  Let me offer an explanation.

 

Social capital is defined as “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.”  To put it another way, social capital is the social ties we develop throughout our lives.  When you are in line at your favorite coffee shop and start chatting with the stranger behind you, you are developing social capital.  And when it goes well you increase your influence (brokerage) with that person even if it’s for just a fleeting moment.  They may decide to check out the movie you recommended or give your friend the real estate agent a call to start the search for their next home.  Notice I said you gain influence, and not authority.  You may have influenced that person to go to the movie, but the odds of you having the authority to make them go to the movie are slim to none. 

 

School boards work in the same way.  If your board is a tight-knit group (get along fairly well) then you are said to have a high degree of closure.  That doesn’t mean you all agree perfectly on everything.  It means you are civil with each other and tend to work towards a collective solution (closure) that is in the best interest of your students.  What’s interesting about close boards that are civil even in disagreement, is that they tend to have higher degrees of influence, or brokerage outside of the board room.  This is critical if you want your board to have influence with the public.  The most important role a board member has is to advocate for resources.  Imagine how difficult that is if the board has no influence because they are dysfunctional with each other.  In the end it’s the students that suffer from having a board that has little-to-no influence with the public outside of the board room.  

 

It’s vital that boards work to increase their influence.  Here’s why.  There is always a crisis of one sort or another.  There is always something that causes controversy.  In those moments the public is looking for leadership they can trust.  If your board is highly effective and functional (closure), then the public in return will tend to trust your team (influence), and the controversy du jour becomes a little less volatile.  In the end, it’s your ability to work with each other that you have control over.  Remember culture eats strategy for breakfast.  And if the culture is correct, it also deals well with crisis and controversy.  It’s time for a cultural shift.