This post was contributed by Brother Raymond Vercruysse.
Please join us on Wednesday, March 30 (3:15-4:30PM) as Brother Raymond Vercruysse will present “A Guide to Effective Catholic School Governance: Your Best Friend, the Board”.
A Guide to Effective Catholic School Governance: Your Best Friend, the Board.
My hope for this presentation is to assist administrators and board members in way to understand each and thus work more effectively on behalf of the students in the school.
Harvard scholar, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, believes that good schools have a sense of mission that kids and adults can articulate. Following this same logic, board members should be able to a clearly articulate the mission of the school because the school administrator has shared the necessary material and good talking points.
When Bishop Robert McElroy was an Auxiliary Bishop in San Francisco and now our host Bishop, in San Diego in wrote in America magazine that
Every Catholic school has its own mission statement, but there is only one universal mission for Catholic education—to point students, families, faculties, administrators and staff constantly towards the order of grace.
It is important that the board and school leadership are speaking the same language and giving witness to the Church’s teachings, thus leading all those involved in the faith and learning community to this grace that Bishop McElroy references. We know from various experiences that relationships and good communication can only foster success within the schools culture.
In Governance as Leadership (2005) by Richard Chait, William Ryan and Barbara Taylor, they stated “The better the board understands governance, the better governed the [school] will be. This is not a vicious circle; it is the cycle of successful governance.”
So, my hope for this presentation is to help board members and the school administrator to work better in their joint understanding of governance, thus working as one unified body and as friends and not adversaries.
