Summer Reading for School Boards — What to Read, How to Discuss It, and Why It Matters
July 16, 2027
Your board committed to summer reading. The board self-assessment identified gaps. The summer work plan included a reading commitment. Now comes the question that determines whether the reading produces governance improvement or a stack of half-finished books on bedside tables.
The question is not: what should we read? The question is: what should we read that will make us better at the specific areas where we need to improve?
Summer reading for a school board is not a book club. It is targeted professional development designed to close specific governance gaps. The books don’t need to be about education — some of the best governance books are about leadership, decision-making, organizational behavior, and strategic planning. What matters is that the reading produces a governance outcome: a better goal statement, a stronger data review protocol, a clearer board communication policy, a more productive relationship with the superintendent.
A curated reading list by ESB domain
Here is a reading list organized by the four ESB domains. Each book is recommended because it addresses a specific governance challenge boards face. The governance question column tells you what the book should help your board answer.
Goal Clarity
| Book | Author | Why it matters | Governance question it helps answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Measure What Matters | John Doerr | The definitive book on OKRs — outcome-driven goal-setting that connects organizational priorities to measurable results | How do we write goals that drive resource allocation and decision-making? |
| The Outcome Mindset | Stephen Shapiro | How to focus on outcomes instead of outputs — the distinction between activity and results | Are our goals about what students will achieve or about what adults will do? |
| Levers of Control | Robert Simons | How leaders use measurement systems to execute strategy — includes the concept of diagnostic versus interactive control systems | Are we measuring what matters, or are we measuring what’s easy to measure? |
| Stakeholder Strategy | John Bryson | How public organizations set strategic priorities when they have multiple stakeholders with competing interests | How do we set goals that balance community priorities, board priorities, and superintendent recommendations? |
Progress Monitoring
| Book | Author | Why it matters | Governance question it helps answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leading Schools | Tim Westerberg | The practitioner’s guide to school leadership through data — includes specific protocols for data-driven decision-making | What does an effective data review actually look like in practice? |
| The Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students | Nancy Love | A step-by-step framework for using data to improve instruction — includes the collaborative inquiry cycle | How do we move from data presentation to data-driven governance decisions? |
| Performance Dashboards | Wayne Eckerson | How to design performance dashboards that drive decisions instead of providing information | What should our board data dashboard include, and how should it be structured? |
Governance Team
| Book | Author | Why it matters | Governance question it helps answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Five Dysfunctions of a Team | Patrick Lencioni | The framework for team dynamics — absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results | What is our board’s biggest team dysfunction, and how do we address it? |
| Boards That Make a Difference | John Carver | The original policy governance model — the framework for defining the board’s role and the superintendent’s role | Are we governing at the right level, or are we operating in the superintendent’s lane? |
| The Advantage | Patrick Lencioni | Organizational health as a competitive advantage — clarity, communication, and accountability at the leadership level | Does our board have the organizational health to govern effectively through conflict? |
Superintendent Partnership
| Book | Author | Why it matters | Governance question it helps answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Governance as Leadership | Richard Chait, William Ryan, Barbara Taylor | The framework for boards as co-creators of organizational direction — beyond fiduciary oversight to strategic partnership | Are we governing as partners with the superintendent, or are we governing as overseers? |
| Boards That Work | Doug Eadie | The practical guide to board-CEO relationships — how to build trust while maintaining accountability | How do we build a relationship with our superintendent that is both trusting and accountable? |
| The Art of the CEO | Stephen Miles | Not a board book directly, but invaluable for understanding the perspective of the person being evaluated | What does our superintendent need from us to be successful? |
How to structure the reading
The board should not ask every board member to read every book. The board should assign books based on the self-assessment findings. If the self-assessment revealed goal vagueness as the top gap, the board president reads Measure What Matters, the vice president reads The Outcome Mindset, and the committee chairs read the progress monitoring books. Each board member produces a one-page reflection: what this book taught me about our board’s governance, and what I recommend we do differently.
Then the board holds a 90-minute summer work session where each board member presents their reflection and the board discusses the implications for the fall governance cycle.
The deliverable
The reading should produce a specific output for the fall: a revised goal-writing framework (from the goal-setting books), a redesigned data review protocol (from the progress monitoring books), a board communication policy revision (from the governance team books), or an updated superintendent partnership framework (from the partnership books).
The reading without the deliverable is an event. The reading with the deliverable is an investment that improves the board’s governance practice starting in September.
Your free CTA: Reply to this email with the keyword Read and I’ll send you the Board Summer Reading List — a curated resource with the full book list organized by ESB domain, the one-page reflection template for each book, the summer work session discussion guide, and the deliverable mapping worksheet that connects each book to a specific governance improvement output.
Your paid CTA: I offer a Board Summer Reading Discussion Facilitation — a ninety-minute virtual session where I facilitate the board’s discussion of the summer reading, connect each book’s insights to the board’s specific self-assessment findings, and help the board produce a governance improvement plan from the reading takeaways. Reply to this email for pricing and availability.
This continues the July Summer Governance Deepening & Fall Prep arc. Monday July 19’s piece covers summer policy work — how the board aligns district policies with next year’s governance priorities during the summer preparation period. Subscribe at effectiveschoolboards.com to continue the series.
Backlinks: This piece builds on the board self-assessment findings (Jun 21 piece) by providing the reading resources to close the identified gaps. The book-to-governance-question mapping follows the four-domain ESB framework used throughout the year’s content. The board communication policy recommendation connects to the February policy audit piece (Feb 10 piece). The deliverable structure follows the same output-oriented approach used in the summer learning agenda piece (Jul 9 piece). The superintendent partnership books connect to the February board-supt relationship check-in (Feb 15 piece) and the June evaluation arc.