Back to the Trenches - school superintendents who choose lower-profile positions in school administration

School Administrator, March, 1996 by Krista Ramsey

Superintendents Who Opt to Return to Principalships and Other Lower-Profile Positions

Al Osborne was young, bright, and moving up fast. At 38, he was offered the superintendency of the Paintsville, Ky., schools. Two years later, he was courted for the same position in Frankfort, the state capital. Both times he grabbed at the chance.

Seven years later, Osborne walked away from the job for which he had spent his entire life preparing. He returned to his former position as a high school principal, a job he says is more time-consuming and demanding than the superintendency he left behind. (See related story, page 29.)

The difference, Osborne says, is that now he occasionally sees a miracle.

"No matter how much you care about the students, the staff, professional development, as superintendent you have to spend a lot of time on the B's-beans, buildings, and buses. They all add up to money," Osborne says.

"Now I work with students who are flexing their muscles, seeing themselves develop, wondering who they are," he says. "I feel my job is a mission. The superintendency was never a mission."

Peace of Mind

Osborne is part of a small but growing number of men and women charting a new course in the American superintendency. They ascend to the top position, grow disillusioned, then retreat down the career track to be a principal, curriculum director, or assistant superintendent. They voluntarily give up higher salaries, larger offices, and a good deal of power and prestige. In return, many say, they find the peace of mind they lost with their last promotion.

Although they come in every temperament and from every type of situation, many, like Osborne, are some of the nation's most promising school system administrators. They turn their back on the job with years left on their contracts, with school boards still voting in their favor.

"Those who leave have not necessarily been unsuccessful. They're just weary," says Gerard Keidel, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators. "The superintendency today is a combination of business, education, and politics. You have to like all three or at least two of the three and accept the other."

Ultimately, Keidel says, "it's the politics that do people in."

Ten minutes into his superintendency, Charles Carlton was slapped with his first grievance from the teachers' union in Canisteo, N.Y. He spent the next two years enmeshed in battle between a strong union and a new school board determined to "trim staff and get back control of the district," he says.

The fight took a personal turn, and Carlton felt himself under siege from board members. "They set expectations that were impossible," says Carlton, now an elementary school principal in the same district. "Sometimes you have to tell them to go to hell, but you bury yourself politically."

Carlton resigned after completing two years of his five-year contract--and after his doctor warned him, "Charlie, if you want to be alive a year from now, you'll get out of that job now."

Uncharted Turf

Nationally, the superintendents' exodus toward lower ranks has caught observers by surprise. No one knows exactly how many leave for lower-level administrative positions, but many state superintendents' associations admit to seeing a small but increasing number each year.

A study of California superintendents in the late 1980s showed that nearly 14 percent assumed a position of lesser responsibility in school districts rather than retiring. In AASA's 1992 national study of school superintendents, 12 percent said they would choose a lower-level position in K-12 education if they had their career to do over again.

The typical departure path, however, is still far more likely to be a move into higher education, private business, or consulting.

Some, like Patricia Hughes of Oneida, N.Y., have built the move into their career path from the start. Hughes intentionally moved from the superintendency of a small district to an assistant superintendency in a larger district to devote herself to the curriculum and staff development issues she enjoyed most. "I know a lot of people who deliberately make the same move," she said. "I've always wanted to be exactly where I now am.

For Hughes, the opportunity arose when her small rural district was consolidated with a neighboring city district.

Others viewed their superintendencies as permanent. When problems arose, they moved back down the career ladder because they were too young for buyouts or adjunct positions in higher education. Like Osborne, many felt they had not accomplished all they set out to with K-12 students.

"They want to contribute, to stay in the profession, but they want something other than the hot seat," says Tracy Dust, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents.

And it's not just that they no longer want their own controversial spot-- they don't want any. In another break with the past, they leave without applying for other superintendencies.

"The difference is we're starting to look at the alternatives, and when you see another district with a situation just as dire as your own, why should you jump on a sinking vessel somewhere else?" says Tom Ryan, who plans to leave his position this spring as superintendent in Aleutians East School District in Sand Point, Alaska, to work as a special education teacher.