Written by Dan Ferris, program director, Board Development Institute, Roche Center for Catholic Education, Boston College, [email protected]
Can Catholic school boards provide better leadership in planning for the future?
We need to think more about the future. Some of us worry about it, despite Jesus’ admonition: “Tomorrow will take care of itself” (Mt. 6:34). But worrying about the future and thinking about the future are very different. It may be that many of us simply don’t get around to it. When our days are consumed with flurries of emails, calls, meetings, requests, demands, emergencies (some real, some not) it’s hard to think about tomorrow, not to mention a month or a year from tomorrow. I’ve watched episodes of American Ninja Warrior, and as a school leader I’ve lived that life, leaping from one challenge to the next—split-second maneuvers—no time but to react.
And then there’s the settling attitude of resignation: “Well, the future’s the future. We’ll get to it when we get to it–organizing that strategic planning process, that curriculum plan we need to develop, that crisis management plan we should have written six months ago, the enrollment plan we need for the spring, adding surplus funds to that reserve fund, creating that endowment to carry us through lean years. For now, it’s in God’s hands and out of my control!” I used to think this was abandonment to the will of God. A holy priest who was also a moral theologian told me otherwise. Could be a sin against prudence, he said.
School boards can be the same. When it comes to designating board meetings for thinking about the future, defining long-range goals and planning how the school will realistically achieve them, some could better draft their agendas. After all, future thinking is one of a board’s most essential roles. It is where a board can have its most significant influence. Unlike a principal, whose primary role is the daily management of the school, a board’s role—even that of an advisory board—is leadership.
A board’s leadership creates vision and the capacity to turn that vision into reality. It engages in long-term institutional planning. It’s why effective school boards bring to bear their members’ talents, experience and expertise as much to solve present needs as to help guide a school into the future—a sustainable future that guarantees the Catholic school’s mission for years to come.
Another sort of meeting. What happens when a school’s leadership and its board members bring harried minds into the boardroom at the end of a long, trying day and then focus their attention on impending challenges? Naturally it leads to functional but predictable board agendas: The opening prayer, reading of the mission statement, president or principal’s report, a lengthy chain of committee reports—some robust and engaging, others less so—brief discussions about pressing issues, a call for new business, a reminder about the date and time of the next meeting, the final remarks, the closing prayer. Meeting adjourned.
Future-focused boards need a different meeting agenda, one that creates space and openness to generative thinking, clear-headed, long-term problem-solving, forecasting probable opportunities and threats, and future-casting of exceptional but possible scenarios. The agenda may begin in a familiar way: The opening prayer, the reading of the mission statement, and the president or principal’s report. But the tedious committee reports are delivered in no more than one to two-minute summaries, highlighting the decision or action required of the board. They’ve already been sent to the members a week in advance of the meeting. Then, they are grouped and voted on as a single agenda item—or tabled for a more in-depth discussion at another meeting.
Now, the board, not yet halfway through the meeting, turns the agenda, its sights and its thinking to the future. It reflects. It pauses. It asks: What aren’t we thinking about and discussing that we should be? What threats face our students’ Catholic education and the school’s sustainability? What opportunities do we have to make our students’ education stronger, richer, more Christ-centered? We can imagine the possibilities:
How do we envision our school 10, 20 or 50 years from now? What will be most strikingly the same? What will be most strikingly different? Will the school be here? Can our school survive in an increasingly competitive school marketplace? What should we, as a board, be doing in the next five years to ensure the school will be thriving? What would a dramatic positive or negative change in the area’s demographic of school-age children mean for the school’s enrollment and delivery of its academic and faith-based program? How will this board, grounded in our school’s mission, do its part to prepare for either outcome?
Have we invested enough in the maintenance of our facilities and the replacement of our aging buildings? Are we maximizing the use of our facilities when the school is in recess to attract new students and develop new revenue streams?
What will the rising cost of everything, including education, mean for our future families’ ability to pay their children’s tuition? Will our endowment income be sufficient five years out or ten years out? How will our workforce change in the next five to ten years? Will our salaries and benefits be competitive? What are we doing to address this need?
How will advancing technology like Artificial Narrow AI, General AI and Transhumanism affect our school’s classroom instruction, learning equity, staffing, individual data privacy and the risks of disinformation, biases and cyber-attacks? Does our current school budget reflect our preparations for technological developments?
These are hard questions, and they won’t find answers when a board is trying to plow through its usual agenda. At times, boards that value generative thinking will “flip” a meeting, putting the strategic discussions upfront after the opening prayer and the reading of the mission statement with the obligatory committee reports assigned to the end of the meeting. Or boards will use an annual retreat, typically guided by a facilitator, with time and the right environment for nothing other than forecasting the future and designing plans to meet it.
It’s finding the balance. Not every board meeting should be an exercise in generative thinking. And it shouldn’t be thought of as an either/or. It’s finding the critical balance, recognizing both the urgency of present board business and the inevitable challenges every school will one day face with a board that is courageous and confident in creating an agenda to address them. Pandemics will emerge (but let’s hope not again for a while), federal emergency funds will dry up, demographics will trend favorably or not so, technology will advance, presidents and principals will come and go, students will change and so will the workforce.
Changes of every kind will push us into the future, whether we are prepared or not. In the face of the unexpected, we don’t want boards succumbing to inertia. I heard it said recently that every closed Catholic school was once a thriving Catholic school. Probably true. But how many of the school boards perceived the possibility of their eventual closing—five, ten or more years in advance and did the planning early enough and with enough determination and resources to avoid it? Or did little or nothing?
Until the Lord returns, boards should regularly engage in future thinking. Our schools and the sustainability of their missions depend on it. Catholic education depends on it. In a word, it’s prudent.
For more on board leadership, I recommend the recent NCEA Monograph, Governance and Leadership: A Sourcebook for Practitioners (NSBECS Standard 5 and 6).
Watch for upcoming webinars
Effective Governance for Catholic Schools:
Exploring the NSBECS Monograph Research & Resources
Wednesday, November 20, 2024, Noon ET
Effective Leadership for Catholic Schools:
Exploring the NSBECS Monograph Research & Resources
Wednesday, December 4, Noon ET
