First Reading: May 18, 2021

Adopted: June 1, 2021

Policy Title: 4.2. Board Job Description
Specific job products of the board, as an informed agent of the ownership, are those that ensure appropriate organizational performance.

The Essex Westford School Board shall hire, negotiate a contract with, and set compensation for the Superintendent.

All Boards have direct responsibility to:

1. Create and maintain the linkage between the ownership and the operational organization to represent the informed voice of the owners. This linkage will include:
   1. Seeking input regarding owner values on issues of Ends and ethics.
   2. Educating owners on issues impacting the organization.
   3. Reporting to the owners on organizational performance.
   4. Ensuring owners and other stakeholders that bring non-governing issues to the Board understand the process for getting their issue addressed by the system in a courteous and respectful manner.
2. Create and maintain written governing policies that realistically address the broadest levels of all organizational decisions and situations.
   1. Ends: organizational outcomes, impacts, benefits, recipients, and their relative worth (what good for which recipients at what cost)
   2. Executive limitations: constraints on executive authority that establish the ethics boundaries within which all executive activity and decisions must take place.
   3. Board-management delegation: how power is delegated and its proper use; the Superintendent’s role, authority, and accountability.
   4. Governance process: specification of how the board conceives, carries out, and monitors its own task.
3. Be familiar with all required policies in effect.
4. Gain assurance of successful organizational performance on Ends and Executive Limitations.
5. Advocate for legislative change which positively impacts public education.
6. Determine the expenditure of surplus funds.
7. Determine the expenditure of long-term reserves.

In addition, the board has taken on the following non-governing outputs:

1. Negotiating union contracts.
2. Conduct fair hearings in its role as a quasi-judicial body.