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In his book, Transforming Education: Building Foundations for Systemic Change and Empowered Communities (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2024), Quintin Shepherd shares his ideas for transformational leadership to assist new administrators, experienced administrators, and school board members. He takes a three-tiered approach to setting goals for schools through expectations, desire, and moral imperative. Shepherd centers the school board as the source of school governance, responsible for ensuring all school community partners are considered when making decisions. School board members are described as parents, community members, and government officials. Shepherd designed the book’s layout so that if you read it from front to back, it is a “theory of action,” and if reading from back to front, it is a “framework.”

The author states that “there is undoubtedly a new level of urgency for transformation change in a post-pandemic world.” This book is intended as a guide to create transformative change in schools through “innovation and creativity, adaptability, resilience, ethical leadership, and urgency for change.” Because Shepherd has served in many leadership capacities in multiple school communities, he can share what has worked when collaborative efforts were made with previous school boards. Even though this book focuses on the governing body of school policies, transformation must occur at every level of school leadership for student success.

In the text, Shepherd explores increased learning through equity-based funding to schools, quality assurance, community ownership, leadership and policy, and public will. Real examples provide access to plans enacted and how they succeeded, as well as a summary of the impact of each approach. The tools for change are given in the first part of the book and establish the framework of transformative leadership.

The latter part of the book elaborates on how to make the changes presented in the first half, with a specific focus on budgeting. Examples of how to create and implement an equitable budget for the benefit of students are provided, along with a more in-depth case study showing how the author effectively implemented an equitable budget. Case studies are presented as examples to support implementation with the described tools. Shepherd suggests that school boards should function as governing boards and not managing boards. They need to understand what students require to be successful (such as mental health support) by using “data as a flashlight and not a hammer.”

The intent of this book is to move away from top-down leadership by encouraging mutual collaboration for common goals. Shepherd shows how collaboration and ownership with the entire school village can help reach common educational goals for students by engaging school communities.