OAK HARBOR: Roles of the School Board & Superintendent (OHSD)

The Oak Harbor School District published a Board of Directors Handbook and linked to it in December 2023, after the election of all five directors in November 2023. We are excerpting the section “Roles of the School Board and Superintendent” for the benefit of our readers. The full handbook (48 pages) can be found at this link.

Roles of the School Board & Superintendent

The five main bodies of work that school boards are responsible for are:

1. Mission, Vision, Goals: Strategic Plan and ends/annual goals for progress monitoring.
2. Finance: Oversight, bond and levy authorization, and annual and 5-year budget adoption.
3. Community Engagement: Being visible and available to the community.
4. Policy. Providing input and adoption of school policies.
5. Hire and evaluate the Superintendent: Using the Strategic Plan to establish clear goals and ends in which the superintendent will be accountable for implementing.

The Board’s most critical role is to hire a superintendent and to monitor the leader’s performance in meeting the goals of the organization without violating typical standards of practice.

The Superintendent’s role is to make the decisions necessary to achieve the goals as established by the Board and to be responsible for those decisions and the outcomes.

A formal evaluation of the Superintendent is conducted annually near the end of the academic year in June. This evaluation is comprised of:

• A summary based on the data derived during the year from monitoring the Board’s Goals that are directly aligned to the Strategic Plan or in some cases, tied to the Ends and Executive Limitations policies.
• Conclusions based upon the Board’s prior action during the year relative to the Superintendent’s reasonable interpretation of each End/Goal, whether each End/Goal has been achieved or reasonable progress has been made toward its achievement.
• Conclusions based upon the Board’s prior action during the year relative to whether the Superintendent has reasonably interpreted and operated within the boundaries established by the Executive Limitations or board policies.

It is the responsibility of the Board President to initiate the annual review and complete the final report no later than the week of the last board meeting in June. The entire Board will generally meet in two executive sessions held in the winter (mid-year review) and again in the spring, to provide input to the evaluation report. (Policy 1630 and 1630P).

The Superintendent’s employment contract is reviewed annually as part of the annual evaluation. State law does not allow for contracts longer than three (3) years (per RCW 28A.330.100(1) and RCW 28A.400.010.) Nonetheless, a typical practice is to annually add an additional year to the contract after satisfactory review of the Superintendent so that the contract has a rolling three-year term.