Life can be hard at the top

For most of us school superintendents are distant, dim figures – one of the grownups on the stage at high school graduation.

Empowering and training principals to be “learning leaders” is all the rage in education circles these days; you hear much less talk about the quality of superintendents.

Summertime is often hit-the-road time for school superintendents, the season when contracts expire and school boards don’t renew them, or when superintendents decide themselves that it’s time to go.

Consider some recent transitions around Colorado:

• Diana Cortez is out as the superintendent of the Centennial District in the San Luis Valley after the school board declined to renew her contract. Tenure was three years.
• Mary Barter left the Durango schools after a tumultuous tenure.
• Superintendent Julie Ford was fired by the Trinidad school board.
• Superintendent Randy Zila is leaving the St. Vrain schools, one of the state’s larger districts, at the end of the next school year. He’s served in the district since 2002.

Superintendent stability is seen as a benefit – a 2006 study by the Denver-based think tank Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning found a positive correlation between superintendent tenure and student achievement.

So, many see superintendent turnover as a problem. Two-and-a-half years is often tossed around as the average tenure of schools chiefs, although some research suggests five years or more is the norm, at least in larger districts.

But, turnover may just be part of a larger problem. A study by the American Association of School Administrators reported this year that “just over 39 percent of superintendents planned to retire in the next five years, and that due to retirements and turnover, nearly 80 percent of all superintendents could retire or change positions in the next five years.”