CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) — For 20 years, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School Board has stood alone in Tennessee – and in a minority nationwide – in using a board model that delegates much of its authority to the director of schools. But the board is now revisiting that model, in what could create a significant shift in how CMCSS operates.

With the “policy governance” model, the School Board has operated under executive limitations and governance processes. On Tuesday, the board sat down to review that model and discuss it with the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA).

What do other school boards do?

In 2003, under Schools Director Sandra Husk, and in an effort led by board member Jim Mann, the board scrapped its old procedures and adopted policy governance. Originally, this model adopted five broad-based goals called “ends policies.” The board and staff worked together to establish ends policies and “executive limitations,” according to Leaf-Chronicle archives from 2003.

“This way, the board is focused on student achievement and is leaving the daily or weekly decision-making on how that achievement is reached with the people who have professional training to do that,” Husk said at the time.

But in recent years, questions have come up about whether the School Board has given away too much of its authority.

“By law, the board is the authority in policymaking,” Dr. Tammy Grissom, TSBA executive director, explained during the board meeting Tuesday night. “Your superintendent, by law, is to carry out those policies and can do so by creating and adopting administrative procedures to carry out those policies.”

Of the 141 district school boards in the state, Grissom said TSBA provides customized policy services for all but six. When asked how the CMCSS model compares to other districts, Grissom said CMCSS is the only board in Tennessee that uses the policy governance model.

“We believe the policy governance (model) gives up the authority of the board and delegates it to the superintendent,” Grissom said. “We don’t think that’s how the law’s set up. The law specifically states that the school board is the policymaking body. That’s how our process has always worked, and that’s how it pretty much works nationwide.”

Grissom said there are few states that have policy governance board models. Of the 17 other states that responded to their survey:

  • Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, New York and Virginia have no school boards that use the model.
  • Alaska, Georgia, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas have one board in each state that used it.
  • Connecticut has two boards “loosely” using it. Colorado has 25 districts using the model, and Vermont and Wyoming have an unspecified number of schools using it.

Former Schools Director Husk came to Clarksville from Colorado.

Rubberstamping and unclear boundaries

Board member Aron Maberry said that after his training with the TSBA, he came onto the CMCSS School Board excited but confused, thinking that he was wrong and the information he had been trained on was incorrect. Then he learned that the authority for creating and approving policies lay within the executive limitations.

“The executive limitations do not fix the ability for a board member that cannot speak into all policies under our current governance policy – just the ones with executive limitations,” Maberry said. “Thus, the majority of what we do seems, to me, like rubberstamping what comes before us.”

Maberry said the executive limitations now present an unusual situation. With newly partisan School Board races, Maberry believes that if a partisan issue comes before the board, the political majority will always win to get executive limitation authority for that particular issue.

“As a person who has been in the political minority for two years, I don’t believe it’s right that the policy changes can be held by a political majority. We all should have the ability to speak to any policy as an elected official representing our districts.”

Board member Kacie Bryant seconded Maberry, saying that scrutiny of the current policy was one of the reasons she ran for School Board, because it’s unclear to many people what the board has authority to do versus what the director can do.

“I’ve sat in School Board meetings for five years now, and it was very confusing to me as an observer and a parent as to what exactly the School Board does,” Bryant said. “Because the longest meeting that I sat and watched with the School Board conversating about important topics was on what we were going name a school.”

Does policy governance violate state law?

Board member Jimmy Garland asked the TSBA representatives if CMCSS was breaking the law by using policy governance.

“Personally, when the law says that the LEA (local education agency) shall adopt a policy on a topic, we recommend the board adopt a policy on that topic,” said Jennifer White, TSBA director of Policy Services and staff attorney. She explained that state and federal law differ for counties, cities and districts, but she emphasized that the law dictates many times that the board must have polices on specific things.

“That’s not the question that I asked,” Garland responded. “I asked if there is anything we’re doing under policy governance, which is monitoring and giving the director authority … is anything that we’re doing, thus far, against the law as it is written?”

“I would defer to your attorney on that,” White said. “Personally, when the law says that you need to adopt a policy on something, I don’t know that that’s a delegable duty.”

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Grissom interjected, explaining that they were asked to come to the meeting to explain their policy services. Grissom said they don’t have expertise in policy governance, and since they have not been asked to review the current CMCSS model, they couldn’t tell Garland if CMCSS was in accordance with the law.

Garland said that in the 20 years CMCSS has used the policy governance model, they have garnered recognition worldwide. Every rule within their policies has been properly scrutinized by attorneys and the director and is in compliance with the laws coming out of the General Assembly.

“I have no respect for those people down in Nashville, for very few of them, I have very little respect for them,” Garland said. “I don’t see what the problem is. I don’t think partisan. I think that we are in this for the children. If it’s not broke, why do we want to fix it?”

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