Beginning in February 2001 the DeForest Area School District Board of Education changed the way that they would operate as a board, moving from being overseers of the "nuts and bolts" of running the school district to having their entire focus on a much higher purpose: shaping and setting policies to ensure each student will be effectively prepared to meet the challenges awaiting them beyond high school.

The decision to move to this governance model was not made lightly. John Carver, creator of this results-oriented governing model says policy governance, to be successful, "requires as much discipline of boards as boards require of staffs" and calls upon them to be "strategic and visionary leaders.’’

Internationally recognized for having developed a breakthrough in board leadership, Carver’s ideas have been implemented in U.S., Canada and on four other continents during the last 20 years.

For the DeForest Board of Education, the move to Policy Governance was the perfect complement to their efforts with the Framework for Our Future conference. This gathering, held in 1999, helped spawn a vision that addressed the evolving needs of our students and the community, insured community support and involvement, and demonstrated institutional accountability and responsibility.

The policy governance model is guided by nine principles:

1. The board is trustee of the owners.
   Adopting this model of governance forces the board to know the community and view it as the true owner of the school system. It means the ends must represent the community’s interests, views and desires. That can’t be accomplished unless links with these owners are maintained by continuously meeting with a wide spectrum of groups, organizations and residents, including students, staff, and alumni. The Framework for Our Future process is the foundation for this.
2. Board decisions are all policy decisions.
   This means being content with not having a finger in every operational pie.
3. Policy should be formulated by determining the broadest values before progressing to more narrow ones.
   Board members shelve personal agendas, pet projects and personality conflicts for the good of the whole.
4. The board should define and delegate, not react and ratify.
   This requires trusting the superintendent, or "CEO," to make the operational decisions necessary to achieve the board’s desired results known as "ends."
5. The pivotal duty of the board: determine the desired ends.
   Board members must also be willing to periodically review, clarify, change and evaluate the ends they’ve established to make certain the desired results can be achieved.
6. The board’s role in means: limit executive discretion; don’t prescribe.
   The board adheres to a hands-off approach regarding the CEO’s decision-making, accepting that the superintendent may do anything within the limits of board policy to achieve the ends.
7. The board establishes its own culture – by policy.
   And they must also agree to monitor their performance against policies for their own governance that deal with conduct at meetings; self-evaluation, board development, discipline and other values.
8. The board must create a relationship with management that is empowering and safe.
   It must agree that the CEO is accountable to the board as a whole, not individual members, assuring freedom on his or her part to make decisions.
9. CEO, or superintendent, performance must be monitored rigorously, but only against policy criteria.
   Having set executive limitations, the board must then be willing to monitor the CEO’s performance only against policy criteria.

For more information about policy governance, contact the Superintendent's office at 842-6577.  More information is also available at PolicyGovernance.com.