Your December Governor’s Checklist: How to Close the Year Strong and Start the Next One Ready
December is where boards either finish the year strong or drift into January without direction.
I’ve seen both play out more times than I can count. The boards that finish strong don’t have more time, more staff support, or more resources. They have a plan. They know exactly what needs to happen between December 1 and December 31, and they execute it with the same discipline they apply to a board meeting agenda.
The boards that drift? They hold their last meeting in mid-December, approve a few routine items, wish each other happy holidays, and don’t think about governance again until the January organizational meeting. Then January arrives, and they spend the first two months of the new year catching up on work they could have done in December.
This newsletter is your December governor’s checklist. Nothing theoretical. Seven actions, in order, with a timeline. Do these, and your board enters January ready to govern — not scrambling to figure out where you left off.
Week One of December: Close Out the Board’s Business
Action 1: Review Your Board’s Goals One Last Time
By now, you’ve done the year-end check-up from our November 23 newsletter. (If you haven’t, pause and do it. The full framework is available at the link above.)
Your goal review should produce one of three verdicts for each goal: achieved, on track (continuing into next year), or abandoned. Be honest about the abandoned ones. Most goals don’t fail because they were the wrong goals. They fail because the board stopped paying attention to them.
Document the verdicts. This becomes the foundation for your 2027 goal-setting work.
Action 2: Confirm Your Data Cadence for the Spring
Here’s a problem I see every January: a board that adopted ambitious new goals in the winter, only to discover in the spring that the data they needed to monitor progress wasn’t available until summer.
The time to fix that is December.
Before the end of the month, confirm with the superintendent exactly which data points will be available, and on what schedule, for each of your goals. If your literacy goal requires mid-year reading assessment data, when does that assessment happen? When do the results arrive? When will they be presented to the board?
If the answer is “we don’t know yet,” that’s a problem. A goal without a data schedule is a wish, not a goal.
Week Two: Plan for the New Year
Action 3: Schedule Your 2027 Goal-Setting Work Session
The best time to set next year’s goals is before the new year starts — not after. Boards that wait until February to start goal setting end up with goals that feel rushed, disconnected from the data, and less likely to be owned by the full board.
Schedule a two-hour work session in January (before the regular meeting) dedicated to goal setting. The agenda:
- Review the year-end verdicts from Action 1
- Present the current data on student outcomes
- Discuss gaps and priorities for the coming year
- Draft proposed goal language
- Assign follow-up for final adoption in February or March
If you’re a board that adopted goals that lasted multiple years, this session is about confirming you’re still on track and making adjustments. If you’re a board that sets goals annually, this is where you do the heavy lifting.
Action 4: Complete the Board Self-Assessment
If your board didn’t complete a self-assessment during the year-end check-up, December is the deadline. Not January. December.
The self-assessment is the board’s most powerful tool for continuous improvement — but only if you actually discuss the results. Too many boards complete the assessment, file it, and never talk about it. That’s a compliance exercise, not a governance practice.
Schedule thirty minutes in your December board meeting or a separate work session to review the self-assessment results as a team. Identify one or two areas where the board wants to improve in the coming year. Write them down. Come back to them mid-year.
Action 5: Prepare for the Superintendent Evaluation Cycle
If your board conducts an annual superintendent evaluation — and it should — the groundwork happens in December.
Confirm the evaluation timeline. Gather the evidence. Review the criteria. Identify whether the evaluation will focus on goal progress, professional standards, board-superintendent agreement, or some combination.
The worst time to design the evaluation process is the night before you’re supposed to conduct it. December is when you set it up.
Week Three: Tie Up Loose Ends
Action 6: Plan Your December Board Agenda
A December board meeting should not be a routine meeting with a holiday theme. It should be a strategic checkpoint.
Your December agenda should include:
- A year-end progress report from the superintendent
- Board self-assessment results and discussion
- Approval of any year-end policy or procedural items
- A preview of the January goal-setting work session
- A public acknowledgment of the board’s accomplishments and challenges from the year
Don’t let the holiday calendar crowd out the governance work. If your December meeting is usually shortened or cancelled, this is the year to protect it.
Action 7: Send a Year-End Community Communication
This is the one action that doesn’t require a board vote, doesn’t need a policy change, and doesn’t take much time — but has an outsized impact on community trust.
Write a brief year-end message from the board to the community. Not a press release. A genuine communication that:
- Thanks the community for their engagement and support
- Names one or two things the board is proud of from the past year
- Acknowledges the challenges that remain
- Invites the community to participate in the coming year’s work, whether through board meeting attendance, committees, or community forums
Post it on the district website, include it in the newsletter, or read it at the December board meeting. It costs nothing. It signals that the board sees itself as part of the community, not above it.
The Bridge to January
Here’s the thing about December governance: it’s not about closing out the year. It’s about setting up the next one.
A board that finishes the year with clear goal verdicts, a scheduled goal-setting session, a completed self-assessment, a superintendent evaluation plan, and a December meeting that actually advances the work — that board walks into January ready.
A board that doesn’t do these things walks into January asking “where do we start?” And by the time they figure it out, they’ve lost January and most of February.
The choice is yours. December is when you make it.
Free CTA — Prep Keyword
Use keyword PREP at effectiveschoolboards.com to download the December Governance Prep Checklist — the same resource offered in last week’s Thanksgiving piece. It’s the one-page version of everything in this newsletter: seven actions, three weeks, your path to a strong finish. Print it and check off each action as your board completes it.
Paid CTA — Annual Governance Health Assessment
Ready for a deeper look? The Annual Governance Health Assessment gives your board a comprehensive evaluation of its governance practices across all four ESB domains. Includes a scored report, peer comparison data, and a prioritized action plan for 2027. Email aj@effectiveschoolboards.com to schedule.
October’s Community Engagement & Trust arc showed you how to earn your community’s trust. November is about keeping it — through accountability, continuity, and the governance habits that outlast any election cycle. Catch the full series in the newsletter archive at effectiveschoolboards.com/newsletter.
This series continues the diagnostics started in September’s Three Gaps arc — budget alignment, progress monitoring, and governance team function. Catch the full series at effectiveschoolboards.com/newsletter.