School board service: How modern school board members engage and understand their leadership role

Michael C. Dunn

doi:10.7273/000006188

Until the final two decades of the twentieth century, American public education and its outcomes were not scrutinized as closely as is true in the twenty-first century. In the prior context school boards had greater local autonomy than now exists. With ratcheted interest and intervention in public education at both the federal and state government levels, and with increasing demands from the business community and various interest groups related to district, school, teacher, and student performance, the foundational concept of local control upon which the American school board was based has been fundamentally impacted. The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences and realities of current, sitting school board members in a modern context, and it targeted understanding the motivations and expectations that current school board members bring to the inception of their board service; their perceptions of the effects their service and leadership has on policy and practice in their local school districts; and an understanding of both the satisfactory aspects and frustrations of such service in light of contextual changes which have affected the scope and impact of historical school board roles and influence. Through a collective case study, data collected for the study consisted of individual interviews conducted with eleven current board members from eleven different school districts, all located within one of the State of Washington's nine Educational Service Districts. The participants in the study generously and honestly shared their experiences as elected school board members, and highlighted both possibilities and limitations associated with service on a contemporary school board. Tallerico (1991) asserts that as school governance becomes increasingly complex yet is still "locally controlled," local policy actors continue to warrant the attention of educators based on the premise that "who those individuals are, what they bring with them, and how they develop over time can be critical variables in local educational policymaking processes" (p.94). The study addresses these important factors of contemporary school board members.

School board service: How modern school board members engage and understand their leadership role

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