What MLK Week Asks of School Boards — Equity Is a Governance Practice
January 18, 2027
MLK Day falls during the most consequential month of the governance year. Your board just adopted its 2027 goals. Your first progress monitoring check-in is two days away. The budget conversation starts in a week.
It’s a natural pause. And I want to use it to ask a question that doesn’t require a board meeting to answer: what does equity look like in governance?
Not equity as a curriculum topic. Not equity as a staff training. Equity as a governance practice — how the board allocates its attention, its resources, and its accountability across every student it serves.
I’ve worked with boards that talk about equity in their strategic plans, their mission statements, and their public communications. And I’ve watched those same boards review student outcome data that only shows district averages. The averages look fine. The gaps are invisible.
Here are three questions I ask every board during this week in January.
1. Who are we not seeing?
When your board reviews data, does it look at district averages or student group breakdowns?
Averages are governance blinders. A district with 70% reading proficiency looks acceptable until you learn it’s 85% for white students and 42% for Black students. The board that reviews only averages cannot see the full picture of who the district is — and is not — serving.
The goals you adopted seven days ago will mean different things for different student groups. If your reading goal targets a 75% proficiency rate, and your Black students are at 42%, the data tells you exactly where the work needs to be concentrated. But only if you’re looking at the disaggregated data.
2. Who are we not hearing?
When boards hear from the community, they tend to hear from the loudest voices. The parents who can attend board meetings at 7 PM on a Tuesday. The advocates who know how to navigate the public comment process. The organized interests.
But whose voices are missing? The family working a second shift who can’t attend evening meetings. The non-native English speaker who doesn’t know the board has a public comment period. The parent whose experience with the school system has been so negative they’ve stopped engaging.
If your board doesn’t have mechanisms to hear from the families furthest from opportunity, your board’s understanding of the community is incomplete.
3. Where is the gap widest — and what are we doing about it?
This is the question that separates boards that talk about equity from boards that govern for equity. Every district has a student group that is furthest from achieving at the level of its peers. If your board can’t name that group and can’t articulate what’s being done — in governance, not just in the classroom — to close the gap, your board isn’t governing equitably.
The answer might be: “Our English learners are furthest behind, and we’ve directed the superintendent to include EL progress data in every monitoring report so we can track the gap across the year.” Or it might be: “Our Black students have the lowest math proficiency, and our budget direction this month will include a specific allocation for math intervention at the schools where the gap is widest.”
The point isn’t the specific answer. The point is having an answer — a governance answer — to the equity question.
MLK Week asks something specific of school boards. Not a resolution. Not a proclamation. A commitment to governing in a way that serves every student, not just the ones the system has always served well.
The goals you adopted on January 11 don’t mean the same thing for every student group. The data you’ll review on January 20 will tell a story. The question is whether you’re willing to read the full story — not the sanitized average version.
That’s what equity in governance looks like. Not a policy. A practice.
Your free CTA: Reply to this email with the keyword Equity and I’ll send you the Governance Equity Reflection Guide — board discussion prompts for your next work session, with disaggregated data review protocols and community engagement audit questions.
No paid CTA: This week’s piece is a reflection, not a sales pitch. I’ll see you on Wednesday for the first progress monitoring check-in.
This continues the January Execution Arc. Catch the full series — from the organizational meeting through the governance roadmap — at effectiveschoolboards.com/newsletter.
Backlinks: December’s Year-End Governance Reset & 2027 Foundation arc gave you the blueprint. This arc executes it. Catch the full Q4 journey at effectiveschoolboards.com/newsletter.