From a legal standpoint, school boards exist for one reason to govern schools by exercising their power as a policymaking body. Good policymaking produces a district that is focused in an educational sense and risk-free at least as much as possible in this litigious environment by legal standards. Bad policies, by contrast, can spark chaos, blur the board’s vision, and allow lawsuits to succeed even when a school district is in the right.

Name: Kenneth Samson
School: University of Santo Tomas

I agree. This is no small point. Intellectually, it is easy to explain how a school board should function, but any given academic year brings 1,001 distractions from the main mission. You have budgets to pass, staff to hire, discipline cases to oversee, lawsuits to defend, constituents to answer, contracts to approve, construction and renovations to plan, and so on ad infinitum.

Yet policy is the tool that has been placed exclusively in the hands of school board members. It is the single, most effective way for the final decision makers to take an intimidating, complex, intensely scrutinized entity like a school district and steer it with authority.

Nah... These school board people are nothing more than traditional politicians. They are not focused on good and applicable policies but on policies how they can stay in power or better yet make money out of their position.

Any body know the legal backing for the composition of a school board?

Hello friend

According to my view Good Policies Produce Better Schools.

every school system, every school and every child is different, and yet there are enough similarities across the board to allow for some uniform success factors. Whelan's book aims to detail what these success factors are, where they have been effective and why, and how they can be implemented.

Good policies also very helpful in supplements of school income.
Have a good time.