Pub. 5 2015-2016 Issue 1

24 1. Not Understanding the Charter Charter applications vary from state to state, but they tend to be long, dense documents. A great governance rule of thumb is that a good board focuses on results, and the management team focuses on the means to get to those re- sults. A small fraction of the charter is the results, or what I like to call your “charter promises”. Every board member needs to understand the charter promises, the methods pro- posed to deliver the promises, and have a clear sense of how these promises will be measured. 2. Not Having a Clear Plan to Conduct Oversight of the Academic Program It may sound counter intuitive, but an effective charter school board generally is not comprised of people with a strong background in education. Your board should have a few people with broad educational management expe- rience (someone who has run a school before, someone who understands how to measure academic results, etc.), but mostly your board composition should be focused on value-add skills—primarily the skills that the school staff will never have. Although most of the board members are non-educators, they need to fully understand the academic plan and partner with the CEO/School Leader to develop a clear and consistent way to measure academic performance. 3. Not Enough Expertise to Conduct Prop- er Financial Oversight The number one reason why charter schools fail is fi- nancial mismanagement. This is generally not due to mal- feasance but to the lack of financial sophistication on the board. It is vital that there is more than one board member with strong financial skills on the board. And, in addition, it is vital that the financially savvy board members ensure that the rest of the board fully understands the annual budget and monthly financial reporting, and is aware of the short and long-term financial projections and their implications for the health and sustainability of the organization. 4. Board Composition Very often the composition of a charter school board is flawed. Not having the right people on the team makes gov- erning effectively a real challenge. Board members should be selected because they bring the requisite skills to govern a multimillion dollar public enterprise; have a passion for the mission of the organization; have the time to serve on a board that will need to meet frequently and, in addition, they should bring a level of objectivity. At BoardOnTrack we typically recommend that less than 2/3 of the board be “direct consumers of the product”; meaning less than 2/3 of the board are parents of students currently attending the school. The ideal set of skills includes finance, human resources/personnel, previous governance experience, fun- draising, academic leadership, understanding of academic metrics, legal, and facilities financing. In addition to skills trustees should be recruited who are good at (and enjoy) group process. Governing is definitely a team sport. 5. Lack of Previous Governance Experi- ence Many boards run into problems because they do not have enough board members with previous governance ex- perience and because their CEO/School Leader has no pre- vious governance experience. The CEO/School Leader has Top 10 Mistakes of Charter School Governing Boards BY MARCI CORNELL-FEIST, CEO AND FOUNDER OF BOARD ONTRACK