Qualifications of a Superintendent by Ann Easton

Knowing that this district is still faced with the decision of a permanent Superintendent, I thought I’d share my perspective.

But What does a Chief Officer do?

The roles of the superintendent includes:

  1. Overseeing daily operations to include managing the budget.  With the budget in mind, it seems the District & the Chief Officer has given much of that responsibility over to the 4 Zone leaders.

But shouldn’t someone actually oversee this process? Maybe that’s why there were so many SEL programs being used in the district. What a waste of resources. And that takes away from funding for academic excellence.

         2.  working with all personnel

I’ve heard there are 8 or 9 principals that are in new positions this year, which is approximately half.

And teacher attrition rate is high. Could be salary issues, But leadership style makes a huge difference to job retention.

Changes in personnel cause at least temporary chaos. And that takes away from Academic excellence.

Long Range planning: That seems non-existent considering the way the redistricting suddenly came up as an issue and had to be pushed through. And I believe without proper research. Well, I did hear about a survey. But why now? Seems political rather than planned. And this was time taken away from working on Academic Excellence.

        3. Providing high-quality academic programs for success is another roel of the superintendent. Selecting the curriculum was given over to the Zone Leaders and is not actually done by the chief officer or the Board of Education.

Since schools are for student learning, I believe the Board needs to be involved and the Superintendent needs to carry out this mission.

This method of Curriculum choice leads to overspending for different programs and possible Inconsistencies in the actual student education, and that takes away from academic excellence.

This separation between the Board and the actual Student achievement needs to be addressed. I suggest either eliminating the Chief officer or eliminating the Zone leaders.

I vote for the first option.