Lonely at the top: the greatest challenge for some superintendents is the professional isolation they feel

School Administrator, Feb, 2004 by Michael Jazzar, Dale P. Kimball

Bob Starma, a high school counselor in a small Midwestern town, wrote a letter to the editor for his local newspaper using his school title to attack the school board as a bunch of hyenas," while using other animal metaphors to accuse the board for not acting in the best interests of all students.

The diatribe sent community members into an uproar, leading to statewide media attention that sensationalized the great divide between the board of education and the school counselor. Superintendent Lou Karter listened carefully.

The moment Starma claimed the administration had knowledge of his writing and use of his school title in his newspaper submission, Lou Karter winced. "I knew there would be trouble," said Mary Karter, wife of the Pigeon County superintendent. "Anyone who knows Lou knew he would have confronted and guided Starma if he would have known."

The school board, already feuding with Karter over other issues, ordered an investigation. A lawyer asked Karter whether the district has a written policy forbidding school staff from attacking the board. "No," Karter replied, "but we don't have a written policy forbidding teachers from physically assaulting board members, either. Some things are just a given."

The board placed Karter (who as high school principal had written a manual on staff and community relations) on administrative leave. Three months later, Karter announced his retirement from the district under pressure.

Mary Karter still doesn't understand what happened to her husband. She wonders how the school board expected him to know what each one of the district's 400 teachers and staff members was doing. "When they find out a priest is doing something wrong, they don't fire the pope," she says.

Starma and the Karters are pseudonyms for real educators. The scenario described, while almost 10 years old, remains too sensitive an issue for the superintendent involved to discuss on the record.

An Isolated Role

The further one goes up the career ladder in education, the more one is exposed to open criticism. Every week brings new stories of superintendents under attack. Usually the crisis involves failed proposals or terminated contracts. The average tenure for superintendents nationwide runs less than five years. Sometimes the stories of confrontation are more tragic, as in the case of a Michigan superintendent who was shot to death by a chemistry teacher.

The signs of current times have left superintendents throughout the nation feeling more isolated and vulnerable than ever. The news media all too often sensationalize superintendent shortcomings beyond repair. Superintendents sometimes see themselves as scapegoats for their staff, parents and communities. They take the heat for what people don't like about their schools, their community or even themselves.

Gary Feenstra, superintendent of the 4,700-student Zeeland, Mich., school district, remembers how alone he felt when the news media grabbed hold of a private communication to parents intended to explain an outsider's challenge to the use of a Harry Potter book, The Sorcerer's Stone. The media sensationalized the communique, twisting the explanation of a library procedure into a censorship issue. The media, says Feenstra, attempted to stoke the matter by pitting the school district and its leadership against the community with all this being portrayed on television.

Many superintendents today say they feel more pressure than even their closest assistant could imagine. Michael Jazzar, a former superintendent who now prepares future educational leaders at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has served as a mentor to hundreds of young administrators on their way to the top. "I always tell them the distance between our two chairs is more than three feet. I have had them come back and tell me how true that is," he says.

Larry Allen, superintendent of the 4,400-student Kings Mountain, N.C., School District, says he watches young rising administrators who don't have a clue how isolated the superintendency can be for someone who is accustomed to collaboration. "They do not see until they are a superintendent how lonely it is," he says.

What's contradictory about this loneliness, superintendents say, is feeling it most intensely in large crowds. Ron Archer, superintendent of the Delton Kellogg School District in southwestern Michigan, says his leadership post in a small community makes him a celebrity of sorts. People know who you are. They see your photo in the newspapers, on television and online. At times this can become a bit claustrophobic. "The lonely factor is you are always on stage and guarding what you say and do," Archer says.

Much of the loneliness stems from a feeling that the superintendent is always performing, always under the klieg lights with an audience watching every move. Behaviors considered normal for many, such as having a few drinks with friends at a bar or restaurant or uttering a four-letter word to express anger or frustration, often are blown wildly out of proportion by those who may have a bone to pick with the top school leader.