How Great I Thought I Was but Probably Wasn’t — Part I
INTROSPECTIVE LONG OPENING SENTENCE
Most boards of education WITH which I worked but not “FOR” just because just a majority of them could fire my ass – to me, that didn’t mean I was working FOR them. It’s not a zero sum game, or even a pair of binary options and the best and luckiest superintendents can actually please a board while working WITH the board of education and FOR the teachers who do the work schools exist to have done, with their TEACHING of the district’s CHILDREN for the children’s selves, and bestowing on the teacher’s themselves the greatest share of available credit for having done their preeminent jobs, with whatever’s left over, in the way of credit, to the children’s PARENTS, who mostly love them the majority of the time, depending on their age, but with enough anger among them to keep the family humble enough to get along in their various fashions, which ain’t easy.
Although I was content being supervised in those days, with an option to fire, by any majority of board members with whom I worked, I always knew how fortunate I would have been, but never was, to have full personal and professional support from each of the hundreds of board members in 70 years as a School Superintendent: (5 years in Westmoreland NY); (11 years or 55 years conterminously as Superintendent in Hebron K-6 (11), Andover K-6 (11), Marlborough K-6 (11), Regional District #8 7-12 (11); Regional Superintendent Oversight Committee (11) [members assigned from other 4 BoEs.]; 10 years in Waterford, Connecticut
I always had strong majority numbers which often brought any of my few skeptics with them on important issues, but I could never count on “always” being supported by all of them all of the time which is typical enough for most superintendent work.
It’s unfortunate but true, that once a board member makes it clear in small or large ways that they don’t really support the superintendent’s leadership and him/her personally nor generally the functioning of the School District as an entity, they morph into powerful magnets of the dissatisfied kind.
As dissatisfaction magnets their lives are all about attracting others with the smallest of personal complaints: about a teacher, principal, secretary, custodian, don’t forget coaches, and of course the superintendent him or herself. Unhappy together they become a hive of noisy buzzing busybodies to discuss, dissect, and eviscerate every school district employee that has ever pissed them off in any way.
Then the dissatisfied lump their various complaints into a massive odiferous round mound of discontent, and present the entire smelly critical mass for public inspection every serendipitously or carefully assembled opportunity they find, or create, with a copy to the superintendent and the board of education. As the heat on Superintendents from the focal point of the dissatisfied rays of the public’s magnifying glass builds, it’s not uncommon for them to just say, “fuck this,” and change kitchens.
School principals in most states have some protection from tenure statutes that cover both them and teachers under the same of differing law. Today that’s even more important than it was in my so called day before America was as politically divided as it is now.
A teaching moment today in an American school at any grade level can be named “Critical Race Theory” (or just three other words for careers left to lose) and bring down upon the teacher’s, principal’s, superintendent’s, and each board of education member’s heads lawsuits from every right wing crazy in a school district with supportive protest rallies led by Marjorie Taylor Green, Ron DiSantis, a bigoted senator drawing the short travel schtick of the day, and loaners from State Mental Hospitals.
But just on the most normal of days, without such special tribulations, there is a circle of thirty or forty teachers around their principal each making mental notes of any perceived quirks, foibles, human flaws or imperfections, for dissection in the teachers’ rooms by any semi-mutinous group of three of more teachers or teachers just enjoying lunch but reviewing their notes.
The same is true for a superintendent, although circled by four or five times greater numbers of staff to be similarly examined for perceived quirks, foibles, human flaws or imperfections, for dissection in the every school’s teachers rooms by any semi-mutinous group of three of more teachers, or maybe ignored if there’s something more interesting to talk about.
In return for our quirks, foibles, human flaws or imperfections personal quirk and professional professional idiosyncrasies receiving such close attention, the more effective principals and superintendents, secure in themselves in spite of human imperfections, accept this disparity between staff and themselves with the ease they require to remain effective.
In that minor part of a superintendent’s or principal’s life I was fortunate enough to never experience any such district heat personal/professional heat that a beer or two, or three, on my part didn’t cool. The same heated circumstances can occur with the best and worst of us. In a number of school districts, large, medium, and small, the worst administrative leadership self-immolates, oft their peculiar wont, so except for sweeping out the cremains any such problems are at least resolved until the next new educational problem solver is hired and the circle of administrative criticisms begins anew.
Using my own experience to indicate an average turnover among 36 members in four boards of Regional District #8 or R-egional (11), H-ebron (9), Andover (7), Marlborough (9 or RHAM at 8 per year with elections every 4 years or 44 new members for an eleven year total total of 80.
Same arithmetic for my “W” bookends Westmoreland and Waterford with 9 members each, 18 total, with a fourteen years total of new members of 12 total totaling 30 overall. The almost grandest of totals or approximately 110 board members with whom I’ve had the pleasure …
Adding the other BoE members with whom I’ve had the same “pleasure,” would be those on dozens of BoE’s for which my partner and I were hired as consultants and interacted with them on district enrollment projections; facilities evaluations; new construction planning with architects; BoE policies and administrative regulations; …
… staff salary, benefits, and other negotiations of conditions of employment; curriculum studies of various kinds; board of education evaluations and board self-evaluations; searches for new superintendents sometimes as combined with an interim superintendency; all involved frequent BoE meetings for the duration of the “Consultancy and planned follow-ups. God alone knows how many board of education members added to the 110, but it may have exceeded that number –or not!
My lives and interactions with board of education members as principal, superintendent, and in consultancies have been challenging, professionally and personally rewarding; a means for a remunerative livelihood as principal, superintendent of schools, and various post-retirement consultancies; and many friendships that have endured for decades.
TO BE CONTINUED IN HOW GREAT I THOUGHT I WAS BUT PROBABLY WASN’T — PART II
TEACHER TO PRINCIPAL TO SUPERINTENDENT PREQUEL AT WARP SPEED, BRIEF EXPLICATIONS, AND UCONN RESIDENCE — A
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David L. Cattanach