by Perry Rettig , Ph.D and Dale Feinauer, Ph.D
January 28, 2002
Dr. Rettig currently serves as Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Prior to this work, he served as a public school principal and as a teacher. He has experience serving on site councils as both a principal and as a parent. He also has consulted with various non-for-profits in strategic planning and board of directors roles. He can be reached via e-mail at Rettig@uwosh.edu
Dr. Feinauer currently serves as Professor in the College of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He has extensive background in consulting with a large diversity of non-for-profits, school districts, and businesses alike. He also has served as a president of a public school district board of education. He can be reached via e-mail at Feinauer@uwosh.edu
School site councils or site-based management teams have found their way into school districts across the nation by both mandate and by principles of shared government. While this movement is very appropriate, often such groups have floundered. Much of this problem exists due to lack of direction caused by misunderstanding of the role of the site council.
Site councils are made up of very diverse groups of people, often with different and narrow personal agendas. These teams are made up of school building administration, professional and classified staff representing teachers and paraprofessionals throughout the school, by parents representing different grade levels and special programs, and sometimes by business/community members. With this great diversity of backgrounds and agendas, role specification is crucial.
Responsibility of the Site Council
Let us consider a site council to have a similar scope of responsibility as a board'of directors in a not-for-profit organization. If you were running a business, the board of directors would be responsible to the stockholders in terms of maximizing stockholder revenues. But school site teams and not-for-profit groups don't have stockholders. School site councils and non-for-profit groups are not beholden to stockholders therefore, but are responsible to the mission of the organization. The mission being the reason the organization exists. Site council members will know if they should belong to the team if they can fully support the mission. Hence, there is a critical need for the site council to develop a mission statement.
There are three major tasks that the site council does in order to discharge its responsibility to fulfilling the mission of the school. These three fundamental tasks of the site council are: strategic planning; supporting the staff hired to carry out the mission; and managing themselves.
Strategic planning
Part of any organization's strategic planning process is developing its mission statement. After the board has identified its mission, it must begin and continue to develop its plan to accomplish its mission.
Supporting the staff hired to carry out the mission
While boards of directors of businesses and non-for-profits have the second responsibility of managing the executive director, school site councils have a somewhat rather different focus. Even though school building administrators have similar roles to those of executive directors, they are different because they are hired and evaluated by central office administrators and boards of education. School principals are hired to carry out the school and district mission. In turn, they hire other professionals to further accomplish these missions. Because of this notable difference, site councils have a correspondingly different responsibility with regard to working with the educators hired to meet the mission statement.
Managing themselves
The third thing site councils need to do is manage themselves--a task that is rarely achieved or even attempted. They are supposed to continually review their role in the organization, identify the tasks they on which they should be working, how they should discharge these tasks, how they should be structured, how they should run their meetings, who they should enroll on the council, and how can they become more informed in order to best carry out these responsibilities.
The Wrong Focus
If you look at the agendas of most site council teams, you will not notice any of these three duties. Rather, you will see them addressing operational and day-to-day types of issues. Site councils find themselves tackling issues such as-. discipline procedures, homework and grading, field trips and their guidelines, special events, and perhaps fundraising.
Site councils must stay out of daily operational issues and tasks of the school. School boards and central office administrators hire professional staff as experts to carry out the mission. The site council's job is to think out into the future. With this focus, they then spend their time in strategic planning on how they can support those experts to carry out their mission, and these site councils also spend their time on identifying and doing the things that will help themselves best support their mission. Site councils don't have the time do get caught up with operational issues of running schools--that's what they hire the educators for.
Specifics to Improving the Function of the Site Council
Let's get into some specifics about what you can do to modify the way your site team operates to improve your function. First, you make certain you keep the site council out of operational issues. Primarily, this can be accomplished by a strong Executive Committee that sets the site council's agenda. This committee ought to sit down and look over the board agenda prior to each full council meeting and ask itself, "Are all these items that the council should be discussing and voting on?" If any item is not a site council's responsibility, that is, it does not fall primarily into one of the areas of strategic planning, supporting the staff hired to carry out the mission, or management of the council itself, it should not be placed on the agenda.
Thus, the items to be placed on the agenda will be broad policy issues as opposed to specifics and operational items. In fact, over 50% of the site council's agenda should have a long-term focus and can even be set on the agenda at the beginning of the school year. Therefore, the agendas should all have a very similar outline punctuated by the three areas of strategic planning, supporting the staff hired to carry out the mission, and management of the council itself. With this said, the site council will have three foundational committees: Strategic Planning Committee, Professional Staff Support Committee, and Site Council Development Committee.
Strategic Planning Committee
The Strategic Planning Committee will usually be a subgroup of the council. Most site councils are too large to do an efficient and effective job of strategic planning. This subcommittee should have approximately seven members. You really need to invest
in educational development for members of the Strategic Planning Committee. Members need to attend conferences and other developmental opportunities, read educational journals, and dialogue with parents, other community members, and educators. They have to keep current and always keep both eyes on the future. So, much of the Strategic Planning Committee's time is spent listening, reading, analyzing and synthesizing. After filtering through all this collective information, this subcommittee passes it on to the full site council. Furthermore, the Strategic Planning
Committee should be drafting a strategic direction for the school. These members are the most immersed in the plethora of information, so they ought to be going to the site council saying, "Here is the direction we think we should explore." Getting reactions, getting some buy-in, getting opposition of the annual modifications to the strategic plan--all these are functions of the Strategic Planning Committee.
Professional Staff Support Committee
This subcommittee of the site council does not have a superfluous function. Some site councils or parent/teacher organizations have a subcommittee that puts on special events or themes for teachers. These events or themes have included such things as: teacher appreciation breakfasts/teas, gift certificates at bookstores and teacher supply stores, recognition plaques/certificates, and other similar awards. Those are all fine things to do, but clearly are not under the purview of the Professional Staff Support Committee.
The Professional Staff Support Committee has the responsibility of identifying the needs of the professional staff (this can include the needs of classified staff and even volunteers) so that they can fulfill the mission set forth by the site council. How do they do this? The Professional Staff Support Committee asks the teachers and then listens to what the teachers say. This can happen both formally and informally on a continual basis. Similarly, they learn from the Strategic Planning Committee whose job is to keep educated on current issues in education and trends for the future. Finally, it is so very important--probably all too obvious--that a fundamental role of the Professional Staff Support Committee is to share the mission with the educators and to get feedback on an on-going basis.
Site Council Development Committee
The Site Council Development Committee is the final standing subcommittee of any school site council. Typically, site councils focus on their development at the end of the school year and have the soul focus of replacing exiting members. The role of this subcommittee should be much more extensive. With an active eye on the school's mission statement and ever evolving strategic plan, the Site Council Development Committee must continually evaluate what types of people with what types of skills, experiences, and backgrounds need to be on the site council in order to fulfill the needs of this mission statement and strategic plan. They ought to ask themselves, "What kind of people and talents do we need?" "What current people and talents do we have?" "Are there gaps?" In addition, this subcommittee will bring in new members and educate them as to the school's mission, the strategic plan, and their roles to these ends.
Putting it all Together
When a school's site council understands its role and focuses its attention accordingly, it is likely that parents, educators, and administrators will all work together toward a common purpose in a matter that is collegial rather than combative. In order for this to happen, the site council must always focus on its mission by thinking of the bigger and long-term picture. It must absolutely not get involved in the daily operational tasks of the professional hired to do the job. This can be accomplished by having a strong executive board who places on the site council agenda only those items for which they are responsible. Those items include, strategic planning, support of the professional staff hired to carry-out the mission through the strategic plan, and management of the site council itself.