My Priorities · Governance & Accountability

Great in the classroom, broken in the boardroom

I ran to protect a district that was already excelling — and discovered the part that needed the most work was how we governed ourselves.

I didn’t run for the school board to shake things up. I ran to protect a district that was doing an excellent job in the classroom. But once I got a look under the hood, I found that while the teaching was strong, the way we governed ourselves needed real repair.

Policies were out of date. Some meetings weren’t being run the way our open-government laws require. And the board’s relationship with its one employee — the superintendent — had drifted, as many school boards do, to the point where the board’s job was treated as rubber-stamping the administration. Good governance isn’t glamorous, and it rarely makes the news. But it’s the structure everything else rests on. So I went to work on it.

Clear roles, read out loud

We reset the line between the board’s job and the superintendent’s: the board sets the destination and holds the administration accountable for results; the superintendent runs the operation. To make that durable, we adopted a clear set of Board Expectations — and we read them aloud at the start of every meeting, so every trustee and every member of the public is level-set on why we’re there. It’s a small ritual that does a lot of work. And it has taken on a life of its own: now, when people bring an issue they’d like the board to consider, they tie it directly to those expectations. It isn’t just our staff who do that — members of the public step up at open comment and make their case by pointing to the very expectation it advances. When the community starts holding you to your own stated standards, you know they’re working.

And when it came time to hire a new superintendent, we ran an open, board-driven search rather than letting a firm recirculate the same rotating candidates from district to district. From there, we invested in real governance and leadership training for the whole team — the new superintendent, the board, the cabinet, and every one of our school-site principals — so everyone was working from the same playbook.

Every policy, out in the open

We audited every policy the district had on the books — hundreds of them — through the board’s Policy Committee, which I’ve served on since my first day and chaired all six years. And we strengthened the rule that governs how policy itself gets made. For any significant new policy, the board now discusses it in public and invites community input first, and does not vote the same day. People deserve to help inform a decision before it’s made — not be informed of one that’s already baked.

Two reforms you can feel

The first is about honesty in budgeting. We moved labor contracts to be settled before the fiscal year begins, instead of the old pattern where teachers started the school year not knowing their pay and waited on retroactive checks. You wouldn’t start a long road trip refusing to check what the gas will cost; a district shouldn’t start a budget year not knowing its biggest expense either. And when we settle early and the state later sends more than expected — as happened this year — we honor our word and share it: we reopened just the pay portion of our settled contracts and added a raise and a one-time stipend for staff. That’s better for teachers, it’s more honest budgeting, and it has built real trust — it’s part of why Roseville has become an employer of choice, a district where teachers want to build an entire career.

The second is about fairness. When the district moved to by-trustee-area elections, I insisted the maps be drawn cleanly and lawfully — strictly by the criteria state law requires, with no reference to where any sitting trustee happened to live. I’ve fought for fair, independent maps everywhere I’ve served; I even wrote the charter amendment that created an independent redistricting commission for the City of Roseville. Drawing your own district lines to protect yourself is exactly the kind of politics a school board should stay out of.

“Build the governance to outlast any one of us — so a good district stays well-run no matter who sits in these chairs.”

Here’s the proof that it’s working: other agencies now ask me to teach it. I’ve been invited to train city councils and school boards around the region — and even to present internationally — on how good governance turns a board and its administration into real partners rather than rivals. That’s the standard I want to keep building: a district that’s not only great in the classroom, but sound and steady in the boardroom, too.

Pete Constant is a former city councilmember, a university professor and department chair, a parent of five Oakmont graduates, and RJUHSD’s Trustee for Area 2. See the full Governance & Accountability record →