Simple Question

How does the Board enforce policy?

It's a simple question, isn't it? The Board Directors, if asked, all claim (rather indignantly) that they DO enforce policy. The state auditor says they don't. I can't find any evidence that indicates that the Board enforces policy. More than that, I can't even think of HOW the Board enforces policy.

No Board member alone can speak for the Board. So no Board member, on their own, can direct the superintendent to do anything. So if an individual Board member, such as Director Martin-Morris, were to discover that a policy, such as Policy B61.00 which requires the superintendent to provide annual reports on District programs, wasn't being followed because there is no report on the Spectrum program, what could he do about it? I suppose he could ask the superintendent, pretty please, to provide the report, but what if she didn't? He could not, on his own, compel her compliance with the policy.

If the Board, as a group, wanted to enforce a policy, such as Policy C54.00 which requires the superintendent to get input from the community before assigning a principal to an alternative school, they would have to meet to do it. Any meeting of a quorum of Board members would be subject to the Open Meetings Act, and would require the posting of an agenda in advance and minutes afterward. There are no minutes from any meeting that describe the Board as taking action to enforce policies.

So how, exactly, does the Board enforce policy? What is the mechanism? And, if I report a violation of Policy, what steps will they take to investigate the reported violation and, if the report has merit, what steps will they take to enforce the policy?

Of course, the readers of this blog may be the exact wrong people to ask. It would make a lot more sense to put these questions to the Board. I did. I just didn't get an answer. Instead, I got a bunch of links to District web pages. There was nothing that told me how they enforce Policy. I also asked the questions of Director Martin-Morris on his blog. Despite his claim that the Board does enforce policy, he chose not to name any instance in which they did and chose not to describe how they do it.

This was always an intriguing question for me, but the recent audit findings have enhanced my interest in it. All the Board members claim that they enforce policy, but none of them can say how they do it or when they've done it. This is becoming my top question for Board Directors.