School Board Coaching Framework

Dorchester County, MD

Program Summary

  • Goal: J2W will provide sufficient funding to provide governance support and coaching to enhance the effectiveness and leadership of the Dorchester County Public School Board. This strategy is designed to build board effectiveness, strengthen superintendent-board collaboration, and establish governance structures that improve student outcomes. An initial Board retreat, followed by ongoing coaching will foster a professional and cohesive governance approach, enabling the Board to navigate its responsibilities effectively. J2W will partner with DCPS and School Board Partners (SBP) to provide tailored and sustained professional development through SBP’s Empowered Governance Framework, focused on improving working relationships and establishing a strong foundation for impactful and effective governance.
  • J2W will provide 3-years of funding to cover the cost of the strategy.
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Measures of Performance

Coming Soon!

Data Analysis

  1. The Approach: SBP offers a comprehensive, long-term approach to professional development for school boards and superintendents, designed to transform board culture, capacity, and productivity. Unlike traditional, “one-and-done” trainings, these services provide ongoing, wraparound support to meet the evolving needs of the Board.

    These services include:

    1. Board Retreat Facilitation
    2. Board Meeting Observations and Feedback
    3. Policy Development
    4. District Goal-Setting Facilitation
    5. Training on Essential Governance Practices
    6. 1:1 Governance Coaching

    This strategy emphasizes building and strengthening relationships at all levels of governance to promote effective collaboration and to ensure the district can meet the needs of its students. Specifically, it focuses on fostering cohesion and trust within the new Board while strengthening its working relationship with the superintendent.

  2. Performance Measures: We will begin this strategy with a focus on creating a strong foundation and set of processes by which the School Board training program can and should perform most effectively. As the coaching framework begins, we will look to assess effectiveness by analyzing the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
    1. Governance training completion rate to ensure high attendance of coaching and training sessions.
    2. Developing board leadership succession plan.
    3. Developing long-term new member onboarding processes.
    4. Continuous improvement through board self-evaluation process.
    5. Perceived effectiveness of board retreats and individualized coaching.
    6. Percentage of time spent during school board meetings on student outcomes versus adult inputs
  3. We expect to begin to evaluating the above KPIs for effectiveness no later than December 2025.