School Board Retreat

The Board, Superintendent and senior staff spent Sunday and Monday at an out-of-town retreat. Before I left, my kids asked questions about it and part of the conversation was explaining to them why some people are very critical of such things. I also explained that what we hoped to accomplish by sequestering ourselves outside of a familiar environment and the distractions of our lives and work was an opportunity to improve how we do our work.

As I write this, it is Monday morning before breakfast. I’m in a room at Capon Springs and Farms Resort, WV. Picture the movie Dirty Dancing, and the old-style Catskills resort where the film is set. This is that place, captured in time. It is white bread Americana. Yesterday we spent about eight hours in a tiny meeting room with checkered linoleum floors, notepads and a big writing easel. We ate a dinner straight out of the 1950s among patrons who have probably been coming here annually since then. After the work was done, a few of us played ping pong until they closed it down.

Board members and staff are roughly two different teams, each trying to explain itself to the other across the gulf of our perspectives and experience. While the staff has generally one person speaking on its behalf on any given topic, the Board usually has 3-4 people coming at it from their various perspectives. Most folks would probably be interested to know that among Board members the compatibilities that count have nothing to do with political party or length of service.

The Board and staff talked about core beliefs, about the roles and responsibilities of staff and Board members, our relationship with the Board of Supervisors, about legal issues and the different worlds that we inhabit as part-time politicians and lifelong educators. This morning we are to discuss the budget process for the next school year (FY10), which is already underway, and then to work out a revised set of goals. Four years ago the previous board set 30 goals, and the consensus is that this is far too many to manage, so that they become essentially meaningless. Each of the goals should tie back to the consensus on core beliefs that I discussed above.

The discussion has been at various times guarded and at others candid. We’ve heard new issues and rehashed old issues, but there is still plenty that will go unsaid when all is done. We’ve tried to cram a lot into a little time because this isn’t an opportunity that comes around very often.

Aligning the schedules of nineteen busy people, half of which have other full-time jobs and most of whom have children at home, is a challenge under any circumstance. Getting them all to drop off out of life for two days is terribly rare.

We’re expecting the presence of a reporter from Leesburg Today at some point during Monday’s session, and I expect that this will put a damper on some of the more pointed discussions, especially on the part of the Superintendent and staff because they’re more disciplined than the Board as a group. While it’s good both to have times of unguarded candor and the transparency of open meetings, any understanding of human nature will tell you that those two things tend to work against each other. (Note: after writing this I was pleased to see even better discussions with Leesburg Today reporter Erika Jacobson in the room than we had the day before. Here is her article.)

It’s time now for another eight hours of meetings.