Sentence:  Dr. Melvin W. Barnes , superintendent , said he thought the schools were waiting for some leadership , perhaps on the national level , to make sure that whatever steps of planning they took would `` <WSD>be</WSD> more fruitful '' , and that he had found that other school districts were not as far along in their planning as this district . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)