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• Strategic Governance Manual

Last Updated:
June 10, 2009
Curator: Linda Sabo, Linda.Sabo@fcps.edu

Strategic Governance Overview

The Fairfax County School Board has a unique and important role to play in assuring that the school system achieves the results expected by the community and deserved by the students the school system serves. As trustees of the system, working on the community's behalf, the School Board is obligated to assure that the community's values and expectations are reflected in the work of the school system and that a transparent governing process facilitates the community's ability to gauge the School Board and school system's performance. 

Strategic Governance is a process [see definition of terms] that allows the School Board to exercise its responsibilities in a manner that assures that the staff, under the authority of the Superintendent, has the freedom and authority to do its work without interference, but also that the School Board and Superintendent are fully accountable to the community for the results.  The School Board accepts the challenge to perform its own duties with the same excellence expected of the Superintendent and staff members.

The heart of strategic governance is establishing performance expectations for both academics, in the form of student achievement goals, and operations, in the form of operational expectations.  The Superintendent and staff members are empowered to develop strategies and action plans to achieve both the specified student achievement goals and the operational expectations.  They are also obligated to demonstrate their accomplishments in relation to the School Board's expectations. 

School system academic and operations performance will be monitored regularly throughout the year by the School Board to assure that reasonable progress is being made toward achieving the student achievement goals and that the system is complying with the Board's operational expectations. And the Board will monitor its own performance just as rigorously in order to assure excellent performance at all levels, from the Boardroom to the classroom.

The Fairfax County School Board believes that Strategic Governance assures that an excellent school system will become an outstanding one.