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6 | JULY 12-JULY 25, 2013
Ms the real job of a school board member?
Editors note: Tlse regional school accrediting agency has taken
issue with the actions of members of metro Atlanta school boards,
including DeKalb County’s school board. Reporter Newspapers
asked Mark Elgart, chief executive officer ofAdvancED, parent of
an accrediting agency that oversees local schools, to discuss the role
school board members should play.
Governance and leadership is critical to the success of any
school or school system. The capacity of a Board of Education
to work in concert with the leadership of a school system is a
critical ingredient to establishing the proper conditions for a
quality school system.
Although board members are elected to serve on the Board
of Education by their voting constituents, the position is not
one of an elected official in the same sense as a state represen
tative in government.
The position on a Board of Education should be guided
by service rather than politics. A member of a Board of Ed
ucation should not have a defined group of constituents, but
rather contribute to the board in fulfilling its role and respon
sibilities so that the school system effectively serves and sup
ports all students.
The Board of Education is designed to support the leader
ship and its administration of the school system. It is not the
role of the board to assume any function related to the admin
istration and management of the school system. However, the
Board of Education (as a whole) should and must hold the su
perintendent accountable for effective administration of the
school system.
Boards of Education fulfill their role during the course of
appropriately planned work sessions, public meetings, and,
when appropriate, board retreats. When individual members
elect to operate outside planned activities of the Board of Ed
ucation, it causes disruption to the work of the board and the
management of the school system, which is the sole responsi
bility of the superintendent and his/her staff.
In fact, serving on a Board of Education should not be
viewed as a job. The employees of the school system have jobs
to fulfill for which they are held
accountable. Every board member
has the responsibility to active
ly participate in planned activi
ties for the Board of Education. In
such activities, the administration
seeks to benefit from the board’s
collective feedback, direction and
appropriate decisions.
The AdvancED Standards for
Quality define responsibilities and
expectations for effective gover
nance and leadership. Schools and
school systems choose to be ac
credited, and in doing so, ask Ad
vancED to ensure that they are
fulfilling all the requirements of
an effective school or school system through the accreditation
process.
As part of that process, AdvancED Accreditation exam
ines the institution’s teaching and assessing practices, the pur
pose and direction of an institution, whether data is used to
support improvement, resources and support systems for stu
dents, and whether its governance and leadership are func
tioning effectively in accordance with established policies.
AdvancED recognizes those institutions deserving of ac
creditation, while at the same time encouraging and expecting
them to demonstrate continuous improvement for the better
ment of all students.
Dr. Mark A. Elgart currently serves as the founding president
and chief executive officer for Advance Education (AdvancED).
AdvancED drives education improvement through research and
innovation, policy and advocacy, technology and accreditation,
serving over 32,000 institutions and 20 million students world
wide. It is the parent organization of the K-12 division of the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which ac
credits the schools in DeKalb and Fulton counties.
MARK A.
ELGART, ED.D.
GUEST COLUMN
On the record
Read these articles from our other editions online at ReporterNewspapers.net.
“Let’s focus on the positives.. .thank the administration for
their willingness to work with us to enhance our plan, and per
haps share how wonderful it would be to offer an option like
ACA to Atlanta families.”
—Atlanta Classical Academy Chairman Matthew Kirby, in a
letter to supporters after the Atlanta school board on July 1 delayed
a vote on the proposed charter school.
“This is one of the things we really, real
ly need to do to protect our citizens. It’s like
having a generator when the electricity goes
out. You don’t use it very often, but when you
do.... It’s a safety issue.”
—Dunwoody City Councilman Denis Shortal,
arguing the city should install tornado warning
sirens in the city.
“It’s not as easy as ‘Yes, they work,’ or ‘No, they don’t work.’
There’s a lot of gray there.”
—Dunwoody City Councilwoman Lynn Deutsch, saying she
needed more information about the warning sirens.
“That’s not chump change for me.”
—Atlanta school board candidate Tom Tidwell, on his decision to
loan his own campaign $20,000 as he challenges incumbent Board
Chairman Reuben McDaniel.
“I think the consensus is that it wasn’t a bad idea to have
multiple agencies looking at what we’re doing in our system.
I am quite confident we will restore accreditation with [the
Southern Associations of Colleges and Schools], but in this new
era of accountability ... the more scrutinizing us, the better. I
think we’ll withstand that scrutiny.”
—DeKalb County school board member Marshall D. Orson,
on the board’s decision that DeKalb high schools should pursue
individual accreditation through the Georgia
Accrediting Commission to supplement the
system’s accreditation, which now is on probation
by the Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools.
“A year to the day that the citizens voted to
incorporate the city of Brookhaven, they’ll see
their own police cars patrolling. That’s a significant milestone.”
— Brookhaven Mayor J. Max Davis, announcing the start of the
city’s police department.
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