The Call You Dread: What to Do Before a Conflict Escalates to Your Superintendent

There is a call most board presidents have rehearsed in their heads and never made.

You know the one. You have thought about it on the drive home from a board meeting that went sideways. You have drafted it in your mind at 11 o'clock at night after reading an email that should not have been sent to seven people. You have almost made it three times, and each time, something stopped you.

This post is about that call -- what stops it, what happens when it does not happen, and what changes when it finally does.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Most governance conversation focuses on board-superintendent conflict. That is a real and serious issue, and it gets appropriate attention. But there is a category of governance dysfunction that is just as damaging and far less addressed: conflict between board members themselves.

A board member who dominates discussion and dismisses colleagues. A member whose behavior in public comment is embarrassing the district. A member who is sharing information from executive session. A member whose ongoing hostility toward another board member has become the actual subject of every meeting, whether it is on the agenda or not.

These are not hypothetical scenarios. They play out in districts across New Jersey every year. And when they do, the person nominally responsible for addressing them is usually the board president -- a volunteer, often without specific training in conflict, who is also a peer of the person causing the problem.

That is a hard position to be in.

The Cost of Not Making the Call

When a board president does not address peer-to-peer dysfunction directly, two things typically happen, and neither is good.

The first is that the behavior continues and compounds. Conflict that is not addressed does not resolve on its own. It accumulates. What starts as an interpersonal friction becomes a pattern. The pattern becomes the culture. And the culture of the board eventually becomes the culture of the district's governance -- visible to staff, to community members, and to the superintendent who has to work inside it every day.

The second is that the problem eventually reaches the superintendent anyway -- not through a direct, honest conversation between the board president and the member, but through a crisis. A formal complaint. A personnel matter. A public confrontation that should have been a private conversation eight months ago.

By the time it reaches that point, the options are narrower and the cost is higher.

The board president who defers long enough eventually pays a different kind of price -- not the discomfort of a hard conversation, but the consequences of an avoidable crisis.

Why Board Presidents Defer

Understanding why this call does not happen is as important as understanding why it should.

The most common reasons are structural. A board president has no formal authority over individual board members. There is no supervisory relationship, no performance review process, no mechanism for directing behavior the way a superintendent can direct a staff member. When a board president addresses a colleague's conduct, they are doing it as a peer, on the basis of role responsibility rather than positional authority.

That is genuinely difficult. And most board presidents were not trained for it.

There are relational factors too. Many board members have history with each other -- through elections, committees, and years of shared work. Addressing a colleague's conduct risks that relationship, and in a small community, the ripple effects can extend beyond the boardroom.

There is also the hope that things will settle on their own. They rarely do. But the hope is understandable, and it is one of the most common reasons direct conversations get postponed past the point where they are easy.

A Practical Sequence: Before It Reaches the Superintendent

What follows is not a script. It is a sequence -- a framework for thinking through the right order of moves before the situation requires a more formal response.

Step One: A private, direct conversation.

This is the starting point. Before any other step, the board president should have a one-on-one conversation with the member whose behavior is causing concern. That conversation should be private, calm, and specific. Not a general expression of dissatisfaction -- a clear description of the behavior, its impact on the board's work, and what needs to change.

The goal of this conversation is not to win an argument. It is to give the member a clear and honest picture of what is happening, directly from a peer, before anyone else is involved. Most people, given that opportunity, respond to it. Not always immediately, and not always perfectly -- but a direct conversation from a respected colleague lands differently than a complaint that has traveled through other channels.

This step is skipped more often than any other. Board presidents frequently move past it -- into triangulating conversations with other members, or into informal conversations with the superintendent -- without ever speaking directly to the person whose behavior is the issue. That sequence almost always makes things worse.

Step Two: Involve the board chair or a neutral board member.

If the direct conversation does not produce change, the next step is to bring in another voice -- a fellow board member with credibility and standing, or the board chair if that role is distinct from the board president's. This is not about building a coalition or applying pressure. It is about having a second person who can confirm, from their own observation, what the board president has raised -- and who can support the conversation without it becoming adversarial.

This step matters because it moves the concern from a personal grievance to a shared governance issue. It signals to the member that the concern is not coming from one relationship -- it is coming from the board's collective functioning.

Step Three: Seek outside support before the situation escalates further.

If the behavior continues after both a direct conversation and an involvement of another board member, that is the signal that the situation is beyond what internal resources can resolve. That does not mean calling the superintendent. It means considering whether a neutral third party -- a governance consultant, a facilitator, or a trained mediator with experience in board dynamics -- can help.

Outside support at this stage is not a failure. It is a governance decision. It is the board president recognizing that the process the board has available internally is not sufficient for the problem in front of it, and that the district's governance is important enough to invest in a different kind of help.

This is the moment ArcSpan is built for.

What the Conversation Actually Sounds Like

One reason board presidents do not make this call is that they cannot quite hear it in their heads. They know something needs to be said, but they do not have language for it that sounds right -- direct without being combative, serious without being accusatory.

Here is one version of how that opening might sound.

"I want to talk with you about something I have been observing in our last few meetings. I am not raising this as a criticism -- I am raising it because I think it is affecting how we are able to work together as a board, and I want to address it before it becomes a bigger issue. Can we find twenty minutes this week?"

That is it. That is enough to begin.

What follows that opening depends on the specifics -- what the behavior is, how long it has been going on, what the relationship between the two people is. But the opening does not need to contain everything. It needs to open the door.

The call most board presidents have been rehearsing is not as complicated as it feels. It is mostly the weight of not knowing what comes next.

What comes next is a conversation. And that conversation, done directly and honestly, is almost always better than the alternative.

About ArcSpan

ArcSpan Mediation & Conflict Solutions works with school boards, superintendents, and governance teams navigating conflict that has moved beyond what internal resources can resolve. The Board-Board Relationship Repair engagement is a structured, four-phase process designed specifically for boards experiencing peer dysfunction, factionalism, or governance breakdown.

If your board is in a situation like the one described in this post, a no-obligation conversation is the right first step.

Board-Board Repair Engagement Overview | Start with a Confidential Conversation

Bruce R. Arcurio, Ed.D. is a civil mediator, conflict consultant, and educational leader with 33 years of experience in public education, including nine years as a superintendent. He is the founder of ArcSpan Mediation & Conflict Solutions, based in Somerset County, New Jersey.