This year is election year for school boards of trustees. In coming months, you will be asked to choose the people who will oversee the education of your children for the next three years.

I have a confession: I like watching elections. I know that for many it runs a distant second to watching paint dry while strapped in a dentist chair, but I genuinely enjoy watching the results come in. My wife thinks I am some strange kind of politics nerd. Each general election I gather close friends of wildly varying opinions together to watch the action while mocking each other’s political choices. I even run a prediction quiz with prizes to test the prophetic powers of our politics. We are frequently more pathetic than prophetic but it does add entertainment value!

I even enjoy following the American elections which shows that I really am a politics geek. For New Zealanders the American political culture and electoral system can seem bizarre. The larger than life characters, the intensity and the huge sums of money are mind boggling. But once you understand the system it’s a bit like a mega-months long endurance horse race with the presidency as the prize.

Closer to home we have an election that makes up in relevance what it lacks in glamour. This year is election year for school boards of trustees. In coming months, you will be asked to choose the people who will oversee the education of your children for the next three years.

The Board of Trustees role is a volunteer governance role. That means it's basically done for free, and it’s more about the big picture than the small details. The Principal and senior management team lead the school day to day and that is exactly what they are supposed to do. As a board member, it is not my job to tell teachers what they should teach or when, but it is my job to help make sure we have enough teachers, facilities and resources to deliver a quality education. Since we are government funded and regulated, we have to do this within the framework and rules the Ministry of Education sets. This limits our freedom but also gives us guidance and support.

Right now our existing board members are deciding if they will be standing again. Now is a good time for other people who might be interested to consider whether they should or could stand for election. To help you with your thinking I want to share five qualities that in my ‘ideal world’ I would like every potential board member to have.

1. Heart

You need to care. You need to have a heart for the young people in our school. As parents we care deeply about the education our own children. As a board member you have to care deeply about the education of everyone’s children.

2. Head

Clear thinking needs to be added to compassion. Sometimes board members have to face hard issues or decisions and be able to ask hard questions. We always look for win/win situations but sometimes we have to make the best of win/lose or even lose/lose options. Things can get complicated so we have to be able to get down to what any issue is really about.

3. Team

Being on a board isn’t about everyone thinking the same, and it certainly isn’t about everyone being the same, but it is still a team environment where people have to work together. It’s generally a consensus environment but we won’t always agree on everything. In such situations you need to be able to respect that people might think differently and be willing to accept the ultimate decision of the board if you happen to be the minority view in some instance.

4. Resilience

Things go well in our school day to day but no one and no organisation has a guarantee that life will be smooth sailing. Some day at some time there’s bound to be a crisis of some kind. It might arise from a mistake we make or the cause may have nothing to do with us at all. The fact is, when you are in governance you have to have the inner durability to cope if something ‘hits the fan’ one day.

5. Strength

This is about the personal qualities and experiences we all bring into the mix. For example, if we are a parent, that parental experience is a strength we bring. Also we may have professional training and experience would be helpful or we might represent a particular ethnic community in our school. It is worth thinking what strengths you have because these will influence what role or focus you might have in a board team.

As for myself I am planning to stand for election again so I guess that means I am announcing my candidacy. Actually, I have to be nominated first before I can stand but Donald Trump wouldn’t let a pesky detail like that get in the way of a big announcement and neither should I. So it’s Aitken for America (I mean) Riccarton in 2016!