Interview with a Superintendent

I sat down recently with a superintendent from a neighboring school district who I have developed a professional relationship over the past several years.  Being in a small school district, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on what my superintendent does on a monthly basis.  I thought it might be more helpful for my growth to speak with a different superintendent with different ideas and perspectives.

I will preface this with saying that the superintendent I interviewed also serves as his district's elementary principal -- a common arrangement in our small, rural school districts across Wisconsin.  I note this as many times during the course of our conversation, I wondered if he was speaking with his superintendent hat on, or his principal hat.  Regardless, I found his insights and perspectives on the job of superintendent to be refreshing, enlightening, and realistic.

Reflecting on our conversation, there seemed to be three general categories that I would classify his monthly checklist items into:  managerial, instructional, and community.

I will begin with the managerial items, as it appears that the majority of the monthly tasks would fall into the management of the school district.  Some of these items include monthly meetings at CESA, monthly Ridge and Valley Conference meetings, development of the School Board meeting agenda, School Board meetings, and monthly departmental leadership meetings within the district.  For example, he meets monthly with the other building Principal, the Director of Maintenance, Director of Food Service, Transportation Director, and Business Manager.  I don't believe that any of these meetings or monthly tasks are necessarily aligned with the district vision or goals, but are necessary tasks to ensure effective management of the district.

There are several tasks that this superintendent performs on a monthly basis that I would categorize as community liaison tasks.  Examples of these tasks include attendance at a variety of community organizational meetings, including the Lions Club, American Legion, and Village Board Meetings.  He views occasional attendance at these meetings as an opportunity to tell the story of his school district.  He is also very active in building collaborative partnerships with local businesses to provide opportunities for students.  He meets with local businesses at least monthly to discuss collaborative opportunities with his district.

Finally are the monthly tasks I would consider instructional in nature.  First, he consistently reviews student data for growth, particularly in classes or grade levels that have historically scored low on assessments.  He meets regularly with teachers to look at the data, discuss instructional and assessment practices, and to identify better instructional and assessment methods.  For example, he met regularly with teachers this past year to discuss benchmark assessments, and ultimately decided to move away from MAP testing and will begin using STAR assessments this coming year.  He has also worked hand in hand with the staff aligning curriculum with the Common Core.  As I stated earlier in the blog, I questioned whether these were tasks he's involved in as the elementary principal, or as the superintendent?  I wonder if he would have that same level of involvement if he were strictly the superintendent.  My guess would be no, rather he would grant that autonomy to the staff and principal.  

I believe from these tasks it would be very easy to create a monthly checklist, but as he stated during our conversation, it's very easy to react to the day to day tasks that arise, and to have to push some of the routine tasks aside.

Applying what I learned to Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid Model, I believe this superintendent to be in the Team Management quartile of the grid.  He often meets with staff concerning student achievement and growth, and often challenges staff, young and veteran, to continually improve their instruction to promote student growth.  This also applies to his departmental leadership, including food service, maintenance, and transportation.  He has built mutual trust and respect with the leadership team, and expects the highest levels of performance in their roles of department leaders.  I would classify the organization under his leadership as productive, continually looking for areas of growth as individuals, teams, and a district.