ABoard Policy Review

1:45 p.m.

The Policy Review Committee met on January 26, 2017. One of the items on the agenda was to discuss the creation of a Board Governance Handbook. After discussion, the committee voted to recommend that a separate committee of the board be established for this purpose. There were concerns that a project of this size was better served by a dedicated group.

The committee further authorized me, Dan Castimore, the chair, to provide a suggested committee charge for this new committee. I have attached this charge.

I am also requesting that the board be more involved with this process than with normal policy revisions for several reasons. Unlike other policies, the handbook is intended to provide guidance to the board exclusively. Because much of the guidance provided in the handbook will be based on the beliefs and opinions of the current board, it will be difficult for a small committee to be able to predict the expectations of all of the members of the board. Finally, the need for a governance handbook is great, and will likely only become more necessary as time goes on.

For these reasons I am asking that the board agree to vote on this handbook 3 times. This is to provide direction and prevent the committee from having to make changes throughout the process. This is an approach that I have been taking with the policy committee and it has been largely successful. I would ask that after the committee creates a draft for the topics to be covered, the board votes on these topics. Any changes to the topics would be made during this vote, and the committee would only move on once this was complete. From that point on the topics would be set and not be readdressed until after the full handbook is completed.

The second vote would come after the committee has prepared draft statements for each of the topics. This would allow the board as a whole to set the tone for the document and agree on difficult decisions before extensive work was done on the document.

Finally, the board would vote on the completed handbook. This would be the time for changes to be made by the board. Once the handbook is approved by the board, the committee would sunset, and future maintenance of the handbook would be turned over to the policy committee.

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The Policy Review committee will be reviewing policy series 7000 New Construction.  Please provide feedback prior to the March 6, 2017 board meeting.  Please provide your comments to Natalie Bates @ nbates@kpbsd.k12.ak.us