Monday
September 29, 2008
by desertjim
Big city school districts are having a hard time holding on to their superintendents. A recent Associated Press article specifically mentions turnover in the top spots in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri and Miami-Dade County, Florida. In some cases the tenure of the superintendent is short indeed. St. Louis is looking for the eighth person to fill the spot in five years. The superintendent in Atlanta, Georgia has been there nine years, but before her arrival the district went through five superintendents in ten years.
It’s not just big cities that have a problem retaining superintendents. Here in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a city of about 85,000, there have been three superintendents since 2005. Various studies done a few years back showed that average tenure for superintendents nationwide ranged from three to seven years. Chicago Public Schools have done pretty well in comparison. Paul Vallas was the chief operating officer for six years and Arne Duncan has now been on the job for seven.
There are a couple of problems with such continuous turnover at the top. One is financial. In many cases school boards end up paying ineffective superintendents to go away. Contract buyouts (euphemized as severance packages) are common. In Texas, for example, $2.4 million has been spent in the last 3 years to buy out the contracts of 20 or so superintendents. Such buyouts clearly have an effect on school district budgets.
The second problem is the lack of continuity in program. A new superintendent brings new priorities and expectations. Just as the teachers and school administrators have adjusted to one set of criteria, there is change at the top and the criteria change. I was lucky to spend most of my classroom career in a district with long-term superintendents. However, there was a four year period in the middle of that time in which we had three changes at the top. The constantly changing orders from the district offices disrupted schedules, teaching staff and the education of our students.
The AP article cited above indicates that part of the problem may be the difficulty in meeting today’s higher demands. Diana Bourisaw, who left the St. Louis superintendency after two years is quoted saying, “School boards like to hire someone to come in and rescue the district, and one person can’t do that.”
As a teacher, I wanted stability in management. I wonder how such constant flux at the top is affecting current classrooms. Have you experienced such turnover at the top? If so, has it affected your classroom?
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