By Del Stover
10/12/04 -- At the end of almost every meeting, the Austin, Texas, school board performs an unusual ritual -- it conducts a debriefing of the evening's work. Did the board stay on task? Did anyone ask unnecessary questions? Did staff reports give the board a clear picture of the issues?
But one evening, a board member, critiqued perhaps one time too many, looked about ready to walk out of the room, recalls Superintendent Pat Forgione. It was a tense moment, but everyone stayed put, and the board completed its self-assessment.
"I've never seen a board so committed to board work," he says. "It takes a lot of work. The board has to have an intellectual investment. They have to be willing to police themselves . . . to say, 'We didn't do as well tonight as we should have.'"
As anecdotes go, this isn't as dramatic as a board facing down an angry mob of parents. But it is revealing: How many school boards -- at the end of a long and tiring evening -- take the time to sit down and work at improving the way they do business?
It's this quest for improvement -- this conscious focus on the art of boardsmanship -- that has helped earn the Austin school board a growing reputation for good governance. As the Austin Chronicle reported earlier this year, "most observers heap praise upon the board and Superintendent Pat Forgione for facing their dilemmas and inevitable conflicts with an attitude of cooperation and open communication."
Opinion counts for little if the data doesn't back it up. But by many measures, Austin is a school district moving in the right direction: Student achievement has risen steadily since 1999, particularly among minority and low-income students.
Among third graders, 97 percent passed the state reading test; and 72 percent of 11th graders passed all state exams -- the highest percentage of any urban district in Texas and a 24 percentage-point increase over the previous year.
This fall, the Texas Association of School Administrators named Austin a Texas Honor Board and a finalist for an award that honors the state's best school board.
Austin didn't win, but more good news came last month, when city voters overwhelmingly approved a $519.5 million bond package for school construction, renovation, and other projects.
"I think the greatest endorsement of the board's work has been the passage of this bond issue at the tail end of a three-year recession in Austin," says Earl Maxwell, a respected business leader in the city.
A troubled past
This Texas school board hasn't always ridden so high in the saddle. In the early 1990s, political bickering among board members prompted the Texas Education Agency to appoint a monitor to baby-sit the board during meetings. At one particularly contentious meeting, the board president turned off other board members' microphones and threatened to have the vice president removed by a police officer.
Scandal erupted again in the late 1990s when a grand jury indicted the district and deputy superintendent on charges related to test tampering. During this period, reports surfaced of cost overruns and other problems associated with a 1996 bond package worth $369 million.
None of this helped the school board's reputation, and the board also found itself unable to hold onto a superintendent. The school system went through five, including interim superintendents, between 1990 and 1999, when the board hired Forgione, a high-ranking official at the National Center for Education Statistics and a former state superintendent of education for Delaware.
But amid such troubles, what many didn't notice was that important changes were at work.
Board President Doyle Valdez says a crucial first step was a 2002 policy change that ended the city's practice of having the board president and vice president elected at large by voters. This allowed board members to elect their own leadership -- and gave the board the ability to hold its officers accountable.
"That had a major impact on how we do business," Valdez says. "We know that if we're not doing our job, the board can change its leadership. Thus we work very hard every day to do the will of the board. It keeps us focused."
Others point to the school board's decision two years ago to adopt the Carver model of policy governance, which focuses board work on policy decisions, not operational ones.
Under this model, school board members can no longer intervene when a parent has a complaint with a principal -- but instead must leave the matter in the hands of school administrators. And, instead of involving itself in the selection of reading curricula, the board is supposed to limit itself to directing the superintendent to boost reading scores -- and then holding him accountable for the results.
The board's commitment to this model has helped the board turn its focus to long-term goals and its vision of where it wants the school system to go, Valdez says.
"We give direction to the superintendent, let him do more of the 'how,' and we really work to support him," he says. "I think part of the dilemma for my first few years on the board is we were reacting to crises. We were more of a micromanaging board. And that's not a very successful way to be."
The board also revamped its conduct of board meetings. Agendas focus more on strategic policy issues, and topics are scheduled well in advance to allow staff to prepare thorough reports for the board. Board members attempt to keep questions to the essentials and "stay on task."
"They're very pragmatic," says Tamara Vannoy, past president of the Austin Council of PTAs. "We no longer have meetings that go to 1 o'clock in the morning."
Challenges remain
One doesn't turn around a 78,000-student school district in a few years, so the jury is still out on whether the board's focus on better governance is making a difference.
But there is a palatable sense of optimism building. In addition to rising test scores, graduation rates are inching up, and there's been a growing focus on implementing intervention and support programs to close the achievement gap.
For the superintendent, one of the more promising signs of the district's progress is the decline in the number of schools labeled low performing by the state. That number, Forgione says, has dropped from 14 to three, and the number of high-performing schools has jumped from 16 to 48.
And that's in the face of serious challenges. Despite a growing focus on the achievement gap, the need to revamp student data collection hampered the district's ability to target resources to the best use.
That data is now available, and officials are working hard to intervene on behalf of minority and poor students who trail white students by 13 to 20 percentile points on state tests.
"I think we were reluctant to throw money at the problem until we knew where we could put resources to get the most out of it," says board member Patricia Whiteside. "Now we have two to four years of reliable data, and I think we are in a position to focus those resources."
Funding woes also pose an obstacle for the school board. Under the state's "Robin Hood" school funding system, Austin surrendered $139.5 million this year to property-poor school districts across the state. [That system was declared unconstitutional last month, but the state has promised to appeal to the state Supreme Court.]
Last year, the district lost $158 million, forcing school officials to cut $42 million from the operating budget and cut 650 positions. Transfers and attrition limited actual layoffs to 30, but the budget cuts still forced officials to trim art, music, and physical education programs; central office staff; teacher pay increases; and class size reduction efforts.
For a school system where 56 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged and 22 percent are English language learners, the hemorrhage of funds is galling. It's all the more so since some funds go to districts with far fewer challenges -- a fact that prompted the school district to join more than 300 others in the lawsuit against the state funding system.
Unlike many urban communities, Austin has recently avoided the bitter, fractious politics that can sink school reform. But cultural and racial divisions still hamper the board's ability to build consensus.
For example, although many community leaders applaud the board's outreach to the public, a few critics argue that the city's poor and minority citizens still feel isolated and ignored, and they are dissatisfied with the district's progress in helping low-performing students.
"There is no substantive involvement . . . just a lack of sensitivity to the different cultures and ethnic groups involved," says the Rev. Sterling Lands, pastor of an East Austin church and president of the Eastside Social Action Coalition. "Yet we have students graduating from high school who can't read the dang-blasted diploma."
Leadership and teamwork
It's no secret that, behind every successful school board, there's a good superintendent. And Austin is no exception: Board members have the luxury to focus on policymaking because they can count on the superintendent to turn policy into measurable results.
The result is a successful "team of 10," as board members put it, that has revamped the district's flawed data-collection system. Forgione also has helped the board by overseeing a systemwide curriculum realignment, putting new administrative talent in key positions, shepherding district finances through last year's budget crisis, and implementing an increasing number of specialized programs designed to support higher student achievement.
In a day when the urban superintendency seems like a revolving door, Forgione's contract has been extended to 2008.
Stability in leadership is also mirrored to some degree in the school board. Elected in 1998, Valdez has served several years as president, and observers say he has proven himself to be a solid consensus-builder and champion of school reform.
Also, most new board members have respected the need to maintain a consistent policy direction for the district and avoid the "policy churn" that plagues all too many urban districts.
"That stability in leadership at both the senior executive and at the governance levels are critical factors that influence and contribute to [the board's] success," says Charles Barnett, vice chair of the education and workforce development committee of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. "If you fail to attend to that, it's hard to be successful."
In the final analysis, the success of the Austin school board rests partly with that intangible, indefinable chemistry that can bind together individuals with a true commitment to children and a sense of teamwork.
It's a sense of teamwork that can overcome differences of opinion. Board member Cheryl Bradley, for instance, is not particularly enamored with the board's commitment to the Carver governance model, which she says can be too restrictive and undervalues the board's input into how policy is put into action.
Still, she is trying to honor the majority's decision. "We're a team," she says. "So, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with it . . . it's still incumbent of me to at least try to put forth some effort."