The Board-Savvy Superintendent

About this book

The Board-Savvy Superintendents hard-hitting no-nonsense advice on school board leadership capitalizes on Houston and Eadies hands-on experience working with hundreds of boards and superintendents over the past quarter-century. It is a practical survive-and-thrive book that will help school district leaders-board members superintendents and senior administrators-learn to work together successfully in leading their districts in these extraordinarily challenging times. Filled with detailed thoroughly tested guidance on how to acquire the skills and knowledge that make up board savvyness it also addresses how to develop the school boards capacity to produce truly high-impact governance and how to build a strong enduring productive board-superintendent working partnership. The authors take a fresh look at the process of governing going well beyond the old-fashioned control-focused "policy governance" approach. Rather than being preoccupied with developing a static structure of policies to distinguish the boards role from the superintendents the book describes how the board and superintendent can creatively work together in making decisions about such critical governing "products" as values vision mission and strategic change initiatives. School district leaders will appreciate The Board-Savvy Superintendents close look at the "gold standard" for board involvement in school affairs: leading strategic change. The authors go well beyond the conventional long-range planning approach of merely projecting everything a school district is doing for some arbitrary period of 3 or 5 years which has generated tons of paper and little important change to provide the reader with detailed practical guidance on engaging school boards creatively and proactively in a much more selective vision-driven process that actually results in the implementation of strategic change: the Strategic Change Portfolio.