Pub. 2 2012-2013 Issue 1

13 O ne of the things I love about my job is that I get to work with wonderful people who volunteer to be part of a charter school board. In my experience, charter school board members are people dedicated to making their school the best it can be for the children that they serve. I know this is true for the charter school governing boards I am privileged to work with. I like to approach board training as an opportunity for governing boards to model learning, to embrace the educational philosophy of modeling the behavior you want. Continual learning by all stakeholders in a school is what true education means to me. A governing board that is able to evaluate their performance as a board and plan training that will lead to improvement is a governing board that truly understands their role as the “Vision” leaders of the school. Brian Carpenter, a nationally recognized charter school board advisor, speaks to how charter school boards develop in their ability to govern not manage, ensure not execute, and my favorite, ask the question “how well” not “how will.” As I have had the opportunity to facilitate board trainings; I have seen that board self-reflection leads to great discussions, BY KIM DOHRER How ‘Wiser’ Is Your Board? CHARTER BOARD PERFORMANCE CONTINUED ON PAGE 14