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Littleton board adopts starter norms at retreat and reviews role in professional learning communities
Summary
At a full-day board retreat, Littleton Elementary District members worked with principals and district leaders to draft three initial board norms, practiced team-accountability exercises, and reviewed how boards can support Professional Learning Community work that centers student learning.
Board members at the Littleton Elementary School District spent the morning of their retreat working on how the governing body will operate together and how it will support classroom-level Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).
In opening remarks the district framed the retreat as a governance workshop to align the board's conduct with district goals and upcoming strategic planning. Facilitators Tina Kaufman, the district director of special education, and Samantha Armstrong, principal at Estraa Vista STEM Academy, led the session on norms with hands-on activities and short videos used at campus staff trainings.
Kaufman told the board, “Start by giving every person at your table the chance to tell you what's one pet peeve that they have about working in a group and then what's one thing that everyone else at the table needs to know,” and then guided members through exercises designed for school teams. Members used the same prompts: examples included off-topic remarks, monopolizing discussion, chronic tardiness and hesitation to make decisions. After small-group sharing, the board adopted three starter norms by a fist-of-five check: (1) conduct constructive, task-oriented dialogue rather than personal conflict; (2) keep discussions student-focused; and (3) communicate honestly and professionally.
Board members debated how to enforce norms in live public meetings, with several expressing reluctance to publicly call out colleagues during recorded sessions. “I don't want someone to publicly call me out because I don't have a good filter,” one member said, and the group agreed to defer a formal accountability mechanism until members have more practice and stronger working relationships. Possible approaches discussed included private signals (sticky notes or discreet hand signals), gentle redirection by the president, and end-of-meeting self-reflection.
Facilitators connected the norms work to PLC practice used in classrooms: norms are meant to support a collaborative culture that enables teams of educators to focus on student learning and on results. During a later presentation on PLCs, district curriculum leaders defined PLCs as teams that (a) focus on learning, (b) work collaboratively, and (c) are results-oriented, explaining that the board's role is to set vision, protect collaborative time, and monitor results.
The retreat's practical exercises included the 'fist-of-five' and a short group task demonstrating gains from coordinated teamwork; presenters used those activities to show how interdependence and mutual accountability yield better results than isolated work. The board agreed to revisit accountability procedures as relationships and routines develop and to tie any formal board-goal adjustments to the district's forthcoming strategic plan.
