The dimension of a Board's work goes far beyond setting a tone. It is in how Boards reward success, how they create images of intelligence and skill, and how they enable resources to serve the issues of equity and excellence that the community understands the value of their school system. Superintendents and Boards of Education, by the very nature of their relationships, stand as models of collaboration for the rest of their school system. Building a community of excellence requires a team that acts with moral authority and coherence around the creation of new knowledge for students as well as for adults. Rest assured there are tensions along the road to building such a community.
Institutional memory dies hard.
The way it used to be is no longer a suitable canvas for creating images of how to educate all children. The work of leadership is the work of suspending belief and demonstrating the possible. When I think about leadership, I think about people who demonstrate the capacity to lead into an undefined area. The trick is to figure out a way to take on society's most compelling and most important, yet unstated and ultimately underfunded, mandate - the transfer of a culture to yet another generation.