If a school leader allows others to write meeting minutes, he will run into
two problems. First, some people will write detailed minutes, indicating
who said what to whom and what the response was. When these minutes are
read at the next meeting, disagreements that had been forgotten appear anew
in print. Participants will often disagree about what they had actually said.
There will be less time for new business as the meeting becomes bogged
down with disagreements about what happened at the previous meeting.
Second, some people are just poor note takers so that what they write
will disagree significantly from what had actually occurred. To set things
straight, the school leader will either have to rewrite everything (telling
the recorder that her work was unacceptable) or devote significant time
to meeting one-on-one with the person to revise her work together so that
feelings are not hurt.
To avoid these issues, always volunteer to write meeting summaries.
You are already a good observer of classroom instruction, capable of us-
ing your notes to document the details of a lesson and write an observation
report. You can apply these skills to taking notes at meetings. To prevent
disagreements, write a simple and direct summary rather than minutes
and avoid indicating what different people said: We discussed (whatever
topic or issue); we agreed on (whatever was decided); we tabled the issue
(until whenever). At the next meeting, the review of the summary should
be quickly completed so that new topics can be discussed.
More often the school leader will delegate other tasks, as Mr. Chen
did with his Brooklyn school’s program chairperson. The program chair
devised the class schedule for each semester and worked with each depart-
ment chair to ensure the classes offered (based on student needs) meshed
with the teacher assignment slots available in each department. Mr. Chen
and the program chair met midway through each semester. The principal
provided the program chair with the projected budget, the number of
staff that would be assigned to each department, and the priorities for the
school (often, the latter reflected the discussions of the School Leadership
Team). The program chair was then free to create a schedule based on
this information. He would then present his program to the department
chairs. If anyone needed a tweak for his or her department or had a special
request previously approved by Mr. Chen, the program chair made the
adjustment. Over time, the program chair developed a basic master plan
that he used year after year with only minor adjustments.
70 Chapter 6