Creating board policies is essential for guiding organizational decision-making and ensuring consistent governance. Upon identifying the need for a new policy, the board should follow these steps:
- Board-level discussion. The full board should first discuss the need for the new policy and establish general considerations for the policy.
- Assign a team to draft a new policy. Often, the CEO is in the best position to draft policies for board review because he or she thinks about the school every day and is frequently most aware of the critical items of the policy. However, since setting board policy is ultimately the board’s responsibility, a board/staff team might be best suited to take on the task. In either case, the board needs to clearly communicate to the team who will ultimately write the draft policy and concerns it has, and it must share any preferences regarding how the new policy will be approached.
- Write a first draft policy. The writing team should develop a draft statement that responds to the issue or question at hand. The team may choose to adapt policies that have been drafted by other charter schools. If a policy becomes too detailed, it might signal that the board has moved beyond policy-making and has begun to invade the CEO’s administrative prerogatives.
- Ask legal counsel to review the draft policy. Depending on the issue at hand, it may be important to have the charter school’s legal counsel review the policy draft. Although he or she should not be expected nor allowed to write the policy, the attorney, who should be familiar with applicable charter school law and regulations, may have helpful suggestions, such as how new policies can be adopted in such a way that previous, related policies can continue to stand. By no means is legal review required of every policy draft under consideration.
- Present the draft policy to the board for approval. It is advisable to have a first reading of the draft policy at a board meeting, to give the writing team informal feedback. The writing team can then incorporate the board’s suggestions and bring the final draft to the next board meeting, when the board can formally adopt it.
- Continue to review and revise board policies. The board should review all its policies periodically to make sure they are still relevant and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Updated