Board of education members never like surprises, and they always want to be well-informed about issues. But how can you take the time to keep the board informed when you have numerous people demanding your attention, zillions of details to take care of every week and never-ending work?

What’s the right information to give to the board, anyway? How much information is enough? Is there an effective way to balance the workload of a superintendent of schools and the necessity of keeping the board of education well-informed?

An idea that I found to be effective in my 23 years as a superintendent of schools is what I called the Friday letter. Here is how it works.

Every Friday afternoon, the last thing I would do before I went home was to send a letter to all of my board members that listed the highlights of the week — not everything that I did, but major issues that I worked on and upcoming issues they needed to be informed about. A paragraph or two about each issue usually sufficed to help them understand the essence of the issue.

How did I find time to write several pages a week? Usually, I wrote a summary of an issue as it concluded, even if it was on a Monday. By breaking my work into smaller, manageable chunks throughout the week, I usually avoided having to spend a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon to write my Friday letter.

If my secretary could summarize an issue adequately, then I asked her type up a summary. In addition, I usually had her type up a calendar of upcoming events for the board members — everything from athletic and academic events to music and theater productions.

For a number of years, I wrote the entire Friday letter because I was a superintendent of a small school district and had a good handle on everything that happened. Later, I became the superintendent of a larger school system where I had several assistant superintendents and a number of principals who all had plenty of responsibility and authority.

I realized that I didn't know everything that was important for the board members to know about like I did with the smaller school system. So, I required each assistant superintendent, principal, the athletic director, director of special education, director of buildings and grounds, etc., to also write a Friday letter — and send it to me.

They did the same thing I did — wrote a paragraph or two about major issues they were dealing with. The administrators had to send their Friday letter to my secretary (typed in Arial, 12-point font) by 1 p.m. every Friday. She compiled all the Friday letters and then emailed the cumulative document to me. I added my comments and then proofed the entire document to be sure I was in agreement with everything the administrators wrote.

Every Friday afternoon, the board members looked forward to receiving the Friday letter. In summary, there were three main benefits from compiling this 6-8-page weekly letter.

First and foremost, the board members felt well-informed about issues. That helped them to make better informed decisions at board meetings while appreciating the many issues the administrators and I handled. In fact, because the board members saw that many complicated issues were ably handled by the administrators, they developed greater respect for them and had less of a tendency to micromanage.

Secondly, by reading the Friday letters from the administrators, I was better informed about issues they were dealing with and therefore could offer help or redirection to them.

Finally, an unanticipated and beneficial result was that the adminstrators saw themselves as essential teammates in the smooth running of the district because they continually contributed to the knowledge of the board of education. There was no "us versus them" mentality. Rather, there was a feeling by the administrators and board that "we're all in this together."

Usually, I sent the Friday letter to the administrators as well as to the board members before I left the office on a Friday afternoon. By reading it, they were also well-informed about the many issues their colleagues were dealing with, which created greater respect for each other as well as a better understanding of the many issues facing the school district.

Is there any downside to compiling such a Friday letter each week? It takes about an hour or two for the administrators to write their portion of it. It takes a total of 3-4 hours for the superintendent to write his Friday letter and then to proof the final document. But, when considering the benefits cited above, I found it to be time well-spent.

Remember that, in most states, such a document is subject to the Freedom of Information Law. I never had the media or anyone else request any of my Friday letters. But, be sure to write about issues in such a way that you would be OK if they appeared on the front page of the local newspaper.