THE ELECTION IS OVER. NOW COMES THE HARD PART: Eight Mistakes Governance Teams Keep Making
Updated: 8 hours ago
Come December, school boards throughout California will reorganize following the November 2026 elections. Newly elected trustees will take their seats alongside returning members, board presidents and clerks will be selected, and everyone will have an opportunity to say a few words about cooperation, collaboration, and doing what's best for students.
And then the real work begins.
Unfortunately, ceremonial declarations of unity don't turn a group into a governance team any more than matching jerseys turn five people into a basketball team.
After seventeen years as a school principal, twelve as a superintendent, and more recent service as an interim superintendent in a district experiencing considerable upheaval after decades of relative stability, I've developed a healthy appreciation for the difference between governing and merely occupying a seat at the governance table.
Following my retirement from the superintendency in June 2024, I took on two challenges that further sharpened that distinction. I began teaching school district governance in the educational leadership doctoral program at California State University, Fullerton, and I developed a series of governance workshops for school boards and their superintendents. Then came my interim superintendency at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, which occupied most of 2025. Navigating organizational instability there offered an unusually revealing opportunity to examine governance in practice.
What emerged from these experiences wasn't particularly complicated, though it was sometimes disheartening. Regardless of political affiliation, personality differences, or the particular controversies consuming a district, struggling governance teams tend to repeat the same mistakes. Eight, in particular. And with new school boards forming this December, now seems like a good time to revisit them.
1. They Confuse Having a Vision With Having a Direction
Ask most school board members whether their district has a vision, and they'll enthusiastically point to a statement prominently displayed on the district website.
Ask them to identify the three most important outcomes the board expects to achieve over the next several years, and the conversation sometimes becomes considerably less enthusiastic.
A vision without clearly established priorities is little more than an aspiration. If everything is important, nothing is particularly important.
Effective governance teams establish a limited number of measurable goals, align their budgets and policies accordingly, and regularly examine whether their efforts are producing the intended results. The test isn't whether everyone can recite the mission statement. It's whether board decisions consistently reflect it.
2. They Mistake Communication for Public Relations
School districts have become quite good at communicating. Websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and carefully crafted messages keep communities informed about district activities. But communication and understanding aren't the same thing. Nor is transparency merely telling people what has already been decided.
A 2026 Brookings Institution survey of America's school board members found substantial differences between what trustees believed their communities prioritized and what the most vocal participants in public controversies appeared to prioritize. The researchers also found that factionalism and community conflict remain significant challenges for many boards.
That ought to concern anyone who equates the loudest voices in the boardroom with the collective voice of the community.
Effective governance teams listen before they decide, explain the reasoning behind difficult decisions, and make room for perspectives that don't necessarily show up at the microphone.
The objective isn't to win the communication battle. It's to build public understanding and trust.
3. They Want to Run the District Instead of Govern It
Few governance mistakes create more organizational confusion than confusing the board's authority to govern with authority to manage. The distinction is fundamental. School boards establish direction, adopt policy, approve budgets, and hold the superintendent accountable.
Superintendents lead district operations within that framework. Yet some trustees find the temptation to intervene in personnel matters, direct principals, or resolve individual complaints irresistible. Perhaps it's because managing produces a more immediate sense of accomplishment than governing. You can see the problem, intervene, and feel as though you've done something. But there's a price. When individual board members begin directing staff, the superintendent's authority is compromised, accountability becomes muddled, and employees are left wondering whose instructions to follow.
AASA's 2025 American Superintendent Study found that nearly one-quarter of responding superintendents identified school board micromanagement as an obstacle to performing their core work.
Here's the paradox: The more a board tries to run the district, the less effectively it may govern it.
The remedy isn't disengagement. It's clarity about roles, respect for the superintendent's administrative authority, and accountability for results rather than day-to-day activities.
4. They Confuse Oversight With Either Interference or Indifference
Some boards micromanage. Others barely manage to ask a meaningful question. Neither approach constitutes effective oversight. The board that spends forty-five minutes debating a relatively minor operational purchase but barely discusses declining student achievement has confused the importance of an issue with its visibility on the agenda.
Effective oversight requires more than receiving reports and approving recommendations. It requires understanding the evidence behind them.
Are students learning? Which students are not experiencing the same success as their peers? Are improvement strategies producing results? Are financial decisions sustainable? What risks are emerging?
And perhaps most importantly, what will the board do differently when the evidence suggests its existing approach isn't working? Good governance doesn't require trustees to know how to administer every district program. It requires them to know what questions to ask and when the answers aren't good enough.
5. They Assume Getting Elected Qualifies Them to Govern
A school board election confers authority. It doesn't necessarily confer expertise. There are remarkably few prerequisites for serving on a school board, yet trustees are immediately expected to make consequential decisions involving multimillion-dollar budgets, labor relations, student learning, facilities, public policy, and the performance of the superintendent. That's a considerable learning curve. And it doesn't become less steep because someone won an election by a comfortable margin.
The California School Boards Association's Professional Governance Standards emphasize continuing professional development, role clarity, collective responsibility, and a shared commitment to student success.
Yet some governance teams treat training as an occasional retreat, something to schedule when relationships deteriorate or a crisis makes the need painfully obvious. Professional development shouldn't be remedial. It should be foundational.
New trustees need a structured introduction to governance. Returning trustees need opportunities to reconsider their assumptions. And the superintendent needs to participate because governance is a team responsibility.
The most effective boards I've encountered aren't the ones that claim to know everything.
They're the ones that recognize how much they still have to learn.
6. They Confuse Representing Their Constituents With Representing All Students
School board members are elected by voters, sometimes from distinct trustee areas. But once seated, they assume responsibility for the educational interests of students throughout the district. All students. That distinction becomes particularly important when contentious social or political issues dominate board meetings.
A trustee may have campaigned on a particular issue, earned the support of a particular constituency, or promised to challenge a longstanding practice. That's democracy.
But governing requires something more. It requires examining how decisions affect students and families whose experiences, needs, and perspectives may differ substantially from those of the people who supported the trustee's election. A board can listen respectfully to its most vocal constituents without allowing them to become the exclusive measure of community priorities.
Representation isn't simply giving the people who voted for you what they want.
It's accepting responsibility for the people who didn't vote for you, too.
7. They Govern the Crisis Instead of the District
Every superintendent knows the feeling. You begin the week intending to focus on instructional improvement, organizational priorities, and long-range planning. By Wednesday, an unexpected controversy has consumed the agenda. School districts don't suffer from a shortage of urgent matters.
The danger arises when urgency becomes the organizing principle of governance.
Reactive boards allow the latest controversy, social media post, or particularly animated public comment to determine what deserves their attention. Strategic priorities gradually disappear beneath an avalanche of immediate demands. And before long, the district has become very good at responding to problems while making remarkably little progress toward solving them.
Effective governance teams distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. They anticipate financial, enrollment, facilities, and instructional challenges. They maintain disciplined agendas. And they resist allowing every new controversy to rewrite the district's priorities. A board that spends all its time putting out fires shouldn't be surprised when it has little time left to build anything.
8. They Forget That the Superintendent Is Part of the Governance Team
This may be the most consequential mistake of all. In California, the superintendent is generally the board's only direct employee. That unique relationship creates an inherent tension. The board must evaluate and hold the superintendent accountable while simultaneously working with that same person as a governance partner.
Neither responsibility can be neglected.
Too often, however, competing interests undermine the relationship. Trustees begin operating as individual supervisors.
Superintendents become defensive or overly cautious. Information becomes fragmented. Trust erodes. And differences that might once have been resolved through conversation become public demonstrations of dysfunction. Meanwhile, the district continues trying to educate children.
The California School Boards Association describes effective governance as a collective responsibility involving the board and superintendent, with clearly understood roles, a common purpose, and mutual accountability. That doesn't mean everyone has to agree. It doesn't mean the superintendent should be insulated from criticism. And it certainly doesn't mean board members should surrender their independent judgment.
It means the governance team must be capable of disagreeing without becoming dysfunctional.
Regular communication, clearly established protocols, meaningful superintendent evaluations, and a shared commitment to the district's goals aren't niceties. They're the infrastructure of effective governance. And without them, even exceptionally talented people can become a remarkably ineffective team.
The Election Is Over. Now What?
A 2025 study of school board elections across sixteen states, published in AERA Open, found considerable turnover among school board members but only a weak relationship between that turnover and student learning rates. In other words, changing the people around the board table doesn't necessarily change what happens in classrooms.
That should give newly elected and returning trustees something to think about as they prepare for December's organizational meetings.
I've made my share of governance mistakes. I wish I could say otherwise. But it took years, more than a few difficult experiences, and considerable trial and error to understand that effective governance isn't primarily about the competence of individual board members. It's about their collective capacity to govern.
People can disagree politically, differ philosophically, and occasionally drive one another a little crazy while still functioning as an effective governance team. But only if they're willing to put the institution's purpose ahead of their individual interests.
The December organizational meeting offers an opportunity to establish that expectation. New officers will be elected. New trustees will assume their responsibilities. And the governance team will have an opportunity to decide how it intends to work together.
My advice? Don't confuse the ceremony with the work. A new board president doesn't create a new governance culture. Neither does a new superintendent, a board retreat, or a beautifully worded set of governance norms.
Creating that culture takes discipline, humility, trust, and a willingness to hold one another accountable.
Now it's time for the governance team to do theirs.
Other recent articles on governance: The Team Within the Governance Team Role Conflict and Governance Caught in the Crosshairs (AASA Festure Article) Succession Planning in the Era of the Superintendent Exodus School Board Members Beliefs About State Education Policymaking and Policymakers (Research article)
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