others attending). If she writes the meeting summaries, she can keep
them short and factual and avoid including details of any disagreements.
This will avoid arguments when the summary is reviewed at the next
meeting. By writing this summary as soon as possible after the meeting,
when everything is fresh in her mind and her notes still make sense, the
school leader will find the task to be relatively easy. See chapter 6 for
further information on this.- Piggyback meetings whenever possible. Here are several examples:
o The old New York City Board of Education had a habit of adding
new school meeting requirements without eliminating old ones. So,
high school principals were required to have a principal’s advisory
meeting once a month with representatives from faculty, students,
parents, and administration. The purpose was to have a venue to dis-
cuss school policies. Then principals were required to have an Aca-
demic Affairs Committee meeting once a month with representatives
from faculty, students, parents, and administration. Its purpose was
to determine policies regarding graduation awards, grading, and
course accreditation. It also provided a venue to discuss school poli-
cies in general.
The savvy principal held one meeting to satisfy both require-
ments. He created two summaries, one for each meeting, so if these
summaries were called for by the district, he would have them on
hand. No one ever realized the summaries for two meetings, with the
same people, held at the same time, were the same. The bureaucratic
bean counters simply filed the reports.
o Meetings requiring parental attendance are often burdensome for the
parents, all of whom are juggling their time between their jobs and
their families. Each month the officers of the Parent Association had
to attend a School Leadership Team meeting, a Parent Association
officers meeting, and a Parent Association officers meeting with the
principal. With the consent of the parents, this was all one meeting
held ninety minutes before the monthly Parent Association general
meeting, which the officers also had to attend. The parents who had
volunteered their time to be officers, therefore, only had to come
to school once a month. Once again, one meeting replaced many,
although three separate summaries were kept on file.66 Chapter 5