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Leading a School System
Superintendents, principals, and boards: governing an institution whose results appear years after the decisions that produced them.
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01
The Principal Who Cannot Be Everywhere
A principal is a supervisor of professionals, a manager of a building, and the person every difficulty in the community eventually reaches. The role has no natural boundary and one has to be constructed.
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02
The Teacher Nobody Can Replace
A rural district competing for staff cannot win on salary and is not primarily losing on salary. What it can offer is specific, and most districts have never articulated it.
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03
When Enrolment Falls
A district losing students faces a decision it will be punished for making and punished worse for deferring. The arithmetic is unforgiving and the community experience of it is not primarily arithmetic.
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04
Leading a District Where Everyone Has Standing
A superintendent answers to a board, a community, a staff, and a set of statutory obligations that occasionally conflict. The job is largely the management of legitimate competing claims.