Council of Schools

A New Initiative: Expand Membership and Create “Council of Schools” Consisting of Active Business and Civic Leaders Interested in Engaging with Working with Individual High Quality District, Charter and Other Schools

BLE is in the early stages of forming a “Council for Schools” for business and civic leaders committed to delivering excellent results for their students.  We believe this could be a great way for school leaders to learn from each other, build relationships and a support network of high-performing schools, and enable another form of engagement between schools and the broader business and civic community.  It would also expand the pool community leaders with knowledge and experience in the district, charter and other independent schools in Boston.

We are still assessing what elements of this Council would have the most impact, and the current thinking involves the following elements:

• Assembling a group of 6-12 leaders from high-performing district and potentially charter and parochial schools
• Conducting a (quarterly) roundtable discussion of school leaders centered around a particular topic; e.g., how to engage parents in the broader community, character development in students, how to improve teacher coaching, how to build external community support, etc.
• Augmenting these sessions with ongoing individual dialog with 2-3 mentor-advisors from the broader business and civic community.  These advisors would provide guidance and serve as a mini-advisory board, primarily for leaders of district schools who may not have a board of trustees or similar support system

Currently, we are doing several things to refine the concept by a) talking with school leaders, b) surveying the range of similar structures (Boston Compact, Schools that Can, etc.) to gauge how a new Council would be most powerful, and c) determining which school leaders would be interested in participating.  We are also interested in building our team of active business and civic leaders, both to help get the Council started, and also to serve as advisors to these school leaders.  If you are interested in learning more, or know of someone who would like to participate, please contact BLE Steering Committee members Nathan Sanders (nsanders@baincapital.com) or Mike Tooke (mtooke44@gmail.com).