August 1, 2020

Governance During the Pandemic

Stop me if you've heard this one. It's late July. The phone rings in the head's office. It's the board chair, calling before he leaves on a family vacation that will bring them back to town just a day or two before school begins. "Just wanted to check in on the fall retreat and new trustee orientation. Do we have dates for those yet? Do you have any ideas for a retreat agenda?" In a pre-pandemic year, veteran heads, knowing that kick-starting board activity each year generally falls to them and their executive assistants, would have picked away at these projects over the summer confident that the board as a whole would sweep into competency mode once school was underway. This year, I worry that not only have heads and board chairs struggled to push trustees into action outside the typical yearly meeting schedule but also that practical planning has consumed the head's every waking moment and the board agenda leaving no time for larger conversations about governance during a crisis.   

This issue of Ahead in the Count is focused on the importance of readying the board for an extraordinary year, one that will become more intense, as it always does, once students and parents roll back onto campus, or into their Zoom cubicles.  It's a call for heads and board chairs to provide themselves with counsel, to make time for strengthening individual trustees and the board as a whole to remain focused on guiding principles and best practice.