Unusual circumstances creating a conflict, requiring a choice, and having pivotal consequences for the future of the organization can serve as tools for assessing management effectiveness, revealing and testing the relationship between the president and the board chair. (MSE)

A positive relationship between the board and the superintendent keeps a school system running. Offers 10 tips to promote such a relationship. (MLF)

According to a survey of 46 recently departed Michigan school superintendents, departing superintendents can announce their intention to leave and still maintain a viable leadership role. Lame-duck superintendents should help the board think through the superintendent-selection process and review possible promotions, recognize staff achievements,…

Stylistic friction between superintendent and school board underlies much of disharmony that often characterizes these relationships. The most successful matches occur between high corporate-type boards and high task-oriented superintendents or between high familial-type boards and high relationship-type superintendents. Friction reduction or…

Offers new superintendents some practical survival strategies, including knowing the board, administrators, and union; understanding the power base and the power of administrator visibility; building good board meetings; and holding their families dear. (MLH)

To make conflict resolution easier, this article advises board members to determine nature of the conflict and choose an appropriate course of action. Situation might call for quick, decisive action; establishing a discussion date; reaching a temporary consensus; or working with involved parties to reach a positive resolution. Sidebar offers tips…

Describes how, although trustees used to shake hands with a new president to seal a deal, both are now insisting on formal terms of employment. (EV)

A former university president and a trustee (who are also father and daughter) apply the rules of good business partnerships to communication between boards and presidents and provide the president and trustee viewpoints on these rules: communicate, be a team, be honest, and be trustworthy. (EV)

A controversy in Durham, NC, has joined two principals in a shared responsibility: turning around the district's two lowest-performing high schools. Henry Pankey identifies a list of goals for Hillside High School, among them a 95 percent attendance rate, and 75 percent of students at grade level. Larry McDonald, who was appointed to succeed…

No graduate program can adequately prepare a novice superintendent for the myriad situations she or he likely will face during the first few years. In addition to learning the job, today's superintendent faces challenges unlike those of prior generations. Perhaps the most difficult one is gaining an understanding of how to work effectively with…

The author describes his initial introduction to school board service. The historical context in which the author became a school board member is described as a means of highlighting the challenges that he faced as a new board member as well as the challenges that public education faced in the early and mid 1980s in a southern state. Stories and…

The expanding pressures on the modern academic president today range from the ever-present demands for fund-raising, to calls for greater accountability and productivity, to proliferating special-interest groups, to steadily harsh criticism from inside and outside the academy. In this pressure-cooker environment, it takes a special kind of…

This booklet examines the role of the professional governing board secretary and offers guidelines for carrying out this responsibility effectively. While a wide range of responsibilities of board secretaries is noted, the board secretary's basic responsibilities center on supporting the governing board's operations, ensuring that institutional…

The relationship between the board of education of a public school system and the school superintendent is extremely important to the functioning and progress of the system. First-time Ohio superintendents were surveyed at the end of their first and second years about their perceptions of their relationships with their boards of education (N=58).…

When some new superintendents assume a new position, they get along with their boards and staff, learn the ropes, and eventually gain credibility and "own" their precarious perch on the wall. Others, like Humpty Dumpty, crash off the wall, never to regain control of the position. Certain factors account for success: experience; clear understanding…