ABSTRACT
School boards across the country have members with the best intentions and great talent and yet that, at times, tend to the "normal curve" of average group performance in terms of how their talents combine. Advancing by retreating, through quality school board professional development, allows board members to understand better not only the information presented to them to govern but, even more so, the dynamic through which they make decisions given that information. While board members can have good individual intentions, the group can at times lack an understanding of how it can benefit from making decisions with input from those contributions collectively. Life often gets so busy that we forget that boards of education must become the community's best students on what it means to serve on a board in the first place. Boards represent the public taxpayer, not necessarily the parents. Said differently, public taxpayers might include business owners, parents, even school employees, and others.
