No single relationship in a school district has a greater impact on successful education than that between the school board and superintendent (Kowalski, 2006). The purpose of this study was to examine and compare perceptions of South Dakota public school superintendents and board presidents regarding collaboration practices for communicating clearly, setting specific goals, and making strategic decisions. These perceptions were analyzed as a function of years of service, educational level, age, gender, enrollment, number of full-time equivalent staff, and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status. The population for the study was comprised of public school superintendents and school board presidents serving in the 152 public school districts of South Dakota. In March 2011, members of the population were mailed a survey, and respondents rated their level of agreement with 14 statements about collaborative governance practices using a five-point Likert scale. The survey instrument was an adaptation of Geisick's (2006) survey developed for the study, "Superintendent and School Board Relations: A Comparative Study of Collaborative Governance Preferences by Superintendents and School Board Presidents." From the total population of 152 school districts, 111 South Dakota public school superintendents, and 61 South Dakota school board presidents completed and returned the survey. An analysis of the demographic data involved calculating frequencies and percentages. For the remaining nine survey items measured by the Likert scale, a combination of descriptive and inferential statistics, mean scores, standard deviations, "t" tests for independent samples, one-way analyses of variances (ANOVAs), Tukey's Post Hoc HSD test, and multiple linear regressions were conducted. The findings that were derived from the analyses of the data collected in this study include the following: (1) South Dakota public school superintendents and board presidents are generally aligned in their agreement of collaborative practices in the areas of communicating clearly, setting specific goals, and making strategic decisions; (2) Superintendents are more likely to perceive engaging in role and responsibility clarification with governance team members, and engaging in reading and sharing the latest research articles regarding school governance as collaborative practices, than board presidents in the areas of communicating clearly; (3) Superintendents of districts with larger enrollments and greater number of full-time equivalent staff perceived that they engage more in collaborative practices than superintendents with smaller enrollments and less full-time equivalent staff. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]