In one of my first faculty meetings at Highland High School many years ago, the principal shared a new district directive. It was a “jumping through hoops” kind of directive that would involve more work for teachers with no justifiable benefit to students. As the principal was speaking, I dutifully took notes and began brainstorming how I would implement it. My brainstorm was interrupted by a veteran teacher, who spoke out against the directive. His voice was joined by others, who claimed their right through shared governance to determine these kinds of things as a faculty. They pointed out that this new policy would just add another task to teachers’ plates without increasing student achievement.
These faculty members respected the intentions behind the policy but knew they could come up with a better plan that met their students’ needs better. By the end of the meeting, I had crossed that directive off my to-do list and was able to focus on tasks that were more relevant to my classroom and my students. That was my first experience with shared governance.
Shared governance is a system of decision-making in which stakeholders, through direct vote and through representatives in leadership teams, help shape the organization. The principles behind shared governance go back to the very establishment of the United States of America — “We the people” enshrined a value of collective responsibility and representation.
While most budgeting, direction-setting and policy-making authority and responsibility lie with the superintendent and the Salt Lake City School District Board of Education, teachers in Salt Lake City School District have some autonomy within their own schools. They have a platform for adding their perspective as the experts in education and can push back against short-sighted reforms.
Recently, Highland’s teachers participated in shared governance by giving feedback to the district on high school scheduling for next year. Before taking a ranked-choice vote, the faculty discussed how the scheduling options might impact their department, sport or sponsored activity. With so many voices represented, I personally learned so much about the ramifications of different scheduling options. That’s what shared governance is all about — bringing educators, staff, administrators and parents to the table to make good decisions for our school and our students.
Shared governance helps filter out undercooked initiatives and allows schools to make decisions based on what is best for their specific group of students. Shared governance is that “something special” about our district and has made us a destination district for talented teachers — we have the highest teacher retention and have the most experienced teaching staff among our peer districts. We have almost two times as many past and present National Board-Certified Teachers as our peer comparison districts combined.
While student achievement is multi-faceted, we must be doing something right in SLCSD. Compared to our peer district averages, SLCSD scored higher in each core subject area (English language arts, science, and mathematics). We beat the state average for post-secondary enrollment as well as both the percent of English learners who made adequate progress and the percent of English learners who reached proficiency. On those last two measures, SLCSD also beat every comparison school.
Last month, the legislative audit subcommittee released a report condemning shared governance as a decision-making model. In their report, they scapegoat and blame teachers while misrepresenting the power of educators to make decisions within schools. They ignore the significant oversight for site-based decisions that the district already holds. They don’t provide any student achievement data and instead rely largely on anecdotal evidence and cherry-picked survey data. They use misleading examples to draw unfounded conclusions — namely, that shared governance is to blame for problems in the district, and not our revolving door of superintendents, a board with a history of interpersonal conflicts and felony charges, or underfunded schools attempting to reckon with increasing student needs.
Our district is not perfect, but one thing it’s gotten right for 50 years is its commitment to shared governance. This system provided a buffer against tumultuous and inconsistent district leadership over the years by tapping into the institutional memory in individual schools and keeping some decision-making power in the hands of teachers. Together with our administrators and district staff, we are doing work that we can be proud of and are making progress toward our mission of “excellence and equity” for all students.
In an era where people are concerned about controversial groups and bad actors infiltrating education, shared governance gives a name and a face to the people who are influencing education at the local level. Parents consistently express trust for their child’s teacher and their own local schools. Removing teachers from the decision-making process will only weaken community influence on public education.
I call on parents, district leaders and state legislators who care about our students and schools to learn more about the accomplishments, positive impacts and nuances of shared governance and to protect site-based decision-making for Salt Lake City School District schools.
(Sarah Nichols) Sarah Nichols, Ed.D., is a National Board-Certified Teacher and a Utah Teacher Fellow. She currently works as an Academic Support teacher for the Salt Lake City School District and serves on the Salt Lake Education Association’s Executive Board.
Sarah Nichols, Ed.D., is a National Board-certified teacher and a Utah Teacher Fellow who uses her voice to advocate for system-wide change out of love for students, teachers, public education and good policy. She currently works as an academic support teacher for the Salt Lake City School District and serves on the Salt Lake Education Association’s executive board. The views reflected here are her own.
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