Assembly can build better school boards

This year, the Clayton County School System made history by becoming just the second school system in the nation to lose its accreditation in nearly 40 years.

The last time that happened was 1969, with a school system in Duval County, Fla.

As disheartening as it was, however, the story doesn’t end with Clayton County.

Mark Elgart, who oversees the organization that accredits more than 90 percent of the school systems in Georgia, says that in the past decade, at least one-fifth of the school boards in Georgia have had problems.

If you doubt how important school boards are, consider this: School boards set the schools’ vision, establish policy and hire the superintendent. And in some cases, local school boards are responsible for approving multimillion-dollar budgets.

At the request of the State Board of Education, our task on the Commission for School Board Excellence was to study the best-performing school boards in the nation — and figure out what they had in common.

In September, the commission issued recommendations that are far-reaching, comprehensive and practical.

“If Georgia can adopt most of these suggestions for change, the state will be a model for the nation in school board governance,” Elgart noted.

The final recommendations are directed at improving the elections, qualifications and training so that boards do not get to a point where state intervention is necessary. We do not recommend that the State School Board have authority to intervene in the local system unless all local attempts to save the failing system have been exhausted at the local level. Even in such cases, the state board, as the entity of last resort, should have only temporary authority to stabilize the system until they can call for new board elections (after which the new local board will regain full authority).

But let us be clear. The majority of Georgia’s school boards operate effectively and without serious problems. Intervention should be the very last resort for the truly dysfunctional boards and after all local attempts to remedy the situation prove unsuccessful. It is meant as an option in the worst-case scenarios, to keep us from repeating the debacle in Clayton, where the residents of Georgia and its leaders were forced to stand with their hands tied behind their backs while the situation deteriorated and students were left to worry for their future.

The bulk of the recommendations are about how to make school boards strong and effective on the front end. These include: creating uniform conflict-of-interest and ethics policies; clarifying the roles of board members and the superintendent; requiring school board candidates to meet minimum qualifications to run and receive capacity-building training once elected; creating nonpartisan elections and limiting boards to no more than seven members.

School boards are responsible for developing strategic plans that set the vision for student achievement in the system. Board members must understand education finance and multimillion-dollar budgets. Their service requires specialized skills and ongoing training to fulfill their duties. As such, board candidates should have a high school degree or GED, have an interest in and focus on improving student success, sign an agreement to abide by a code of ethics and conflict-of-interest policy, and be willing to attend training.

Legislation will be introduced in the 2009 session of the Georgia General Assembly to move these recommendations into reality. This is important work.

Good school board governance has a direct impact on pupil performance and graduation success. In the new economy, 80 percent of jobs will require a two-year technical or four-year college degree. Education is the root of all economic growth, and as business leaders, we must do everything possible to ensure that Georgia’s children are ready to compete in the global economy.

• John Rice is vice chairman of GE, president & CEO of GE Infrastructure and co-chair of the Commission for School Board Excellence. Gary Price, a commission co-chair, is managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Phil Jacobs, also a commission co-chair, is the former president of AT&T in Georgia.