What do school boards do?
In Alberta, citizens elect school boards to act for the legislature in their local schools and communities.
Sturgeon Public School’s Board of Trustees is responsible for outstanding work that benefits our schools and communities. Our Trustees act as advocates to ensure students throughout the division receive the best possible educational opportunities. They play a vital role in managing the affairs of the division. As elected officials, they're accountable to the community they serve and are responsible for overseeing and directing the operations of the school division.
Authority
The new Education Act allows for more local decision making through added flexibility. The new Act provides more discretion in how boards fulfill their responsibilities to the community.
Our Board of Trustees is granted many types of authority to enable it to fulfill its mandate to provide kindergarten to Grade 12 education within our jurisdiction. These powers relate to providing educational services.
Leadership
School Boards exercise leadership through governance in three areas: fiduciary leadership, strategic leadership and generative leadership. The new Education Act places more emphasis on school boards as generative leaders.
When fulfilling its fiduciary leadership role, our Board ensures:
- each student has the opportunity to achieve his/her potential
- children are safe at school
- the jurisdiction’s financial and capital resources are well managed
- its business is conducted in a legal and ethical manner
When acting in its strategic leadership role, our Board is planning for the future. Informed by environmental scans, our trustees work on the school system’s mission, values, vision and goals. They make decisions about resources, programs and services that reflect our long term priorities.
Generative leadership reflects the belief that “it takes a whole village to raise a child.” In this role, our trustees talk to the community about the community’s needs, the community’s youth and the future. True generative leadership sees school boards share direction setting and even decision making with others. The Board gives all citizens an opportunity to shape the direction that education takes locally.
Decision Making
School boards are decision makers. The Board gathers information from many sources, processes that information, evaluates it and makes a decision that reflects our beliefs, values and goals. Our trustees consider the interests of all students in our jurisdiction, not just the interests of students from a particular school or area.
The Board of Trustees exercises its decision-making authority by passing motions. These motions must be passed by the corporate board at a properly constituted meeting. The school board is a corporation. No individual trustee, not even the board chair, can make decisions for the Board without the Board’s permission.
The Board-Superintendent Relationship
The Board selects a superintendent of schools, delegates administrative duties to the superintendent and evaluates the superintendent’s performance. The Board clearly outlines its expectations of the superintendent. A school board’s relationship with the superintendent is the most important relationship in the school system. They have different but complementary roles, which the Board must clearly establish.
Accountability
The Board holds the system and itself accountable for achieving its goals. The Board assigns roles and responsibilities for the desired results and creates a system to monitor and evaluate achievement of those results. The Board reports system and school performance to the public and to the provincial government.
Priorities
Currently, our Board of Trustees is working on the following priorities. Select the priority of your choice for more information about work that has been completed, is currently underway or in the planning stages.