Episode 110: Great on Their Behalf with AJ Crabill, Author of Great on Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective

Improving student outcomes is Airick Journey Crabill’s relentless focus. He currently serves as the Conservator at DeSoto, Texas, Independent School District. During his guidance, DeSoto made double digit literacy gains and improved from having F ratings in areas of academics, finance, and governance to the district earning B ratings. He’s also Faculty at the Leadership Institution of Nevada; Collaborator with the Effective School Boards Initiative; and National Director of Governance at the Council of the Great City Schools in Washington, DC.

He served as Deputy Commissioner at the Texas Education Agency, and he spearheaded reforms as board chair of Kansas City (MO) Public Schools that doubled the percentage of students who are literate and numerate and eventually led KCPS to full accreditation for the first time in decades. Crabill received the Education Commission of the State's James Bryant Conant Award, which recognizes extraordinary individual contributions to education.

What are some of the big-ticket items that a typical board should think of when it comes to improving student outcomes?

There is only one reason the school system and institution exist regardless of whether it is an early childhood system, a K-12 system, or a higher ED system to improve student outcomes. The board’s role in this is to represent the vision of the community and first step in representing the vision of the community. This consists of listening for what the community wants the students to know and be able to do. That is just as important, regardless of the age level of the students that you're working with. The Board has to set a clear vision around what is it we want our students to do, what no one is able to do, what is victory, and what success for our organization looks like. It is also the responsibility of the governing body to represent the value of the community to represent. The non-negotiables have to be honored along the way. In early childhood, the goal might be around students learning, basic letter sounds, and a guard row. One of the values might be around safety and learning, how to stay safe with all their peers at a K-12 level. The vision and goals might be around students graduating and having the skills necessary to be successful so whatever path of life the students choose to get into. At the university level, the goals might be around students actually completing some type of degree where the value. Regardless of each level, each of these organizations serves the community, and the job of the governing body is to listen to that community's vision for what that group of students should know, and be able to do and codify them to a set of goals so that communities values of what are the non-negotiations that should be honor and codify those values into a set of goals.

How does the Board listen to the community yet also guide the community on the right way of doing things?

Each community is different so the vision of values of each community is going to vary. With smaller rural school systems and things may look different with their board when compared to a large urban school system. They have very different sets of visions and values and the job of the governing body is to represent those visual values, whichever they might be. It is not a matter of the right way or wrong way, it is just for each community, it is the job of the educational institution governing body to listen to that community’s unique sets of values and codify those into the practice of the institution. What this looks like from system to system will vary.

What tools does the Board have to understand the pulse of the community?

The governing bodies have to get outside of the confines of their board members. That is not an authentic form of community engagement, but it’s certainly an appropriate, viable way for members of the community to be heard if they should choose to. When the Board is deciding that it wants to go out and listen for the visual value of the community, it actually has to do that with intention and have a specific system in place. They first need to attend to community engagement work, which means they need to be thoughtful about who are all the different communities that they need to be listening to and try to host a series of listening opportunities that will bring those folks into them. What they are actively doing is they are saying, they want to hear from these communities. They going to host, however, many meetings we need to go out and have those communities come and speak with us but community engagement won't be enough. In addition, they're also going to have to do community outreach work. Community outreach work is it recognizes that there are certain communities that even when we host meetings they're not coming to us, so we have to go to them. The board also has to build a list of who are all the play portion of the community, where if they do not go to their meetings, then the communities won’t come as well. It has to be a combination of community engagement sessions, especially call meetings specifically to engage in a listening and community outreach session intentionally leaving the board's meetings and going out to meetings and community to do listening in places where it otherwise would not happen.

Contact  AJ Crabill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajcrabill/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ajcrabill7/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajcrabill7

Get your copy of Great on Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective: www.GreatOnTheirBehalf.com

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