HOUGHTON — Parents and taxpayers who attend school board meetings typically see a one-hour meeting at which board members follow an agenda. Typically, agenda items include routine matters: adopt the agenda, approve the minutes of the previous month’s meeting and approve checks written during the previous month. Reports from the district superintendent are heard, followed by the reports of the principals of each school within the district.

New Business/Action Items section of the meeting is where the public begins to get a real sense of what the School Board does, and how its members function, both as individuals, as a board, and also how the superintendent functions and interacts with the board.

For instance, in the hiring of a faculty member such as a teacher or a principal, the superintendent and his staff often conduct screenings and interviews for these positions, then recommend the selected candidate to the board for the position.

It is the board, however, that approves or denies the hiring of the candidate, doing so by a vote.

Action items may include whether to accept or decline the resignation of a staff or faculty member within the district.

The monthly meetings of a School Board are intended to keep the Board transparent in conducting it business. While School Board meetings also allot a time for public comment, comment is not intended to be a question/answer period, but a period in which Board members have an opportunity to hear concerns and thoughts of parents and district taxpayers. In the end, the only time the public sees the school board in action of any kind is at a monthly meeting. But the monthly reports are a summary of what the board and the administrative staff are doing during that month “behind the scenes.”

Just one of the functions of the board is to ensure that the annual school handbooks are ready for approval before the beginning of each school year, as well as the curriculum guides for each school: elementary, middle and high school. Some of the responsibilities a school board faces are more serious than others.

During summer 2023, the Hancock Public Schools Board of Education exercised full transparency through its months-long process of working with the Michigan Association of School Boards in its search for a district superintendent. Through the selection and interview process, the board remained conscious of the budgetary constraints of the district when it finally selected Interim Superintendent Chris Salani to fill the position permanently. The position was posted internally.

While the board had the option to post the position externally, said board President Catherine Jordan, time lines, in addition to budget concerns, prompted the board in its decision to post internally first.

Trustee Wendy Chynoweth concurred, adding that an external posting would have cost more than $2,000 in addition to the cost of working with the MASB.

Jordan said another major drawback was that the district could not expect to hire an external superintendent before January, time the district currently did not have due, in part to anticipated faculty changes this coming spring.

Mary Brayak, consultant with the MASB and educational search specialist, worked with the school board on the superintendent selection. She said she was impressed with the board’s commitment to the process.