Board Member - Northland Age Article

Support your School

On the 10^th of June a new Board of Trustees will take office at your local school. Who is going to put their hand up? Are these people going to reflect and represent the make-up of your community? The Board play an extremely important role in ensuring that your school is a successful entity. The Board sit at the top of the governance structure at your school supporting the Principal to implement the Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan is a critical document that should reflect both Ministry of Education educational goals and also your local school community goals. Many of these will be about lifting student achievement.  Therefore one of the key roles of the Board is too monitor the achievement of students through resources such as school data. As a Board member you develop (alongside your Principal) other documents that support the Strategic Plan. Documents such as the Annual Plans that lay down specific actions to make possible the goals laid out in the Strategic Plan. There are also other things that a Board does, ensuring the legal requirements are met, fulfilling the intent of the Treaty of Waitangi and appointing new Principals. This sounds like an awful lot of work but the reality is that the Principal will guide and many times lead. It is the role of the Principal to implement the Strategic Plan, it is the role of the Principal to ensure the school meets all legal requirements; it is the role of the Principal to manage the day to day rumblings and rolling of a school. The Board monitor and support the Principal to do these things. An engaged Board member keeps up to date by reading monthly reports before monthly meetings, attends meetings and asks questions, attends Professional Development and becomes part of the school (walks through classrooms/ gets to know the staff/ gets to know the students and parents). It is really important that a Board member actually gets down on the office floor and gains a ‘real’ perspective of how a school works. Schools have made huge changes to the way education is presented, it is personal, it is evidence based, it is digital, it is a forever changing beast that is locked on lifting student achievement (which comes in many forms). My intention is not to scare people off but attract the right people to the job. You do not need to be the local brain surgeon or business owner to be a great Board member. You need to be there for every single child at your kura, you need to put a little time aside to do your ‘Board Duties’ so you are informed and able to participate in discussion and decisions at the Board table. You need to be passionate about making your school a great place to live and learn. This is a great opportunity to play a really important part in your community.