The Interim Superintendency

School Administrator, March, 2000 by Krista Ramsey

Boer arrived at Putnam County in June, often a superintendent's busiest time of year, when he was confronted with building a budget, employing new staff and helping the board decide on a levy campaign.

"It was probably the most positive experience of my administrative career," he says now. "I've really recharged my batteries doing this."

Boer understands, as few people do, what it takes to succeed in this tenuous position.

An interim superintendent should be a workaholic who can put in 12- to 14 hour days. He or she should have served in a full-time superintendency and had experience dealing with school finance, personnel, maintenance and labor relations. The best interims will be exceptional listeners and extraordinary team builders. "And probably the most important personal quality is being positive and having a sense of humor. You're walking into some pretty tense situations," Boer says.

Giugni, an interim superintendent in California who helped place other interim leaders when he was executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, says he looked for someone who was "a risk-taker--someone who can assess a situation quickly. You don't get six months to look it over."

And when the Princeton, N.J., school board went looking for an interim superintendent last year, the top priority on its list of professional criteria was "somebody with integrity and a willingness to tell us the truth," says board member Flaherty. "We needed someone who would not paper over our problems, but also not start assigning blame."

III-Fitting Matches

But just as there are better matches, there are also worse ones. While ambitious lower-level administrators may see an interim position as a way to climb into the top spot, veterans say experience as a full-time superintendent is crucial. Intense pressures, tight deadlines and often only partial authority to deal with them makes a temporary superintendency the worst training ground for inexperienced administrators.

Likewise, most observers of the job say the interim superintendency can be compromised by using inside candidates who are vying for the full-time job. That situation can mean smaller pools of outside applicants, who feel the insider has the advantage, or lingering resentment after the decision is made. "Boards need to be cautioned against that," says Patrick Mark, superintendent of Marion-Adams School Corp. in Sheridan, Ind., who followed interim Wayne Long into the job. "There can be hard feelings if the interim doesn't get the job after he's taken ownership of the district."

Mark says Long's willingness to step out of the job led to a smooth and productive transition. He also had had a long-time mentoring relationship with Long.

However, Susan Moore Johnson believes inside candidates often provide the best chance for continuity of approach and community confidence.

"Sometimes people from inside who were appointed acting superintendent become candidates for the search," she says. "If the district is content with the acting person, it can be a testing time and the candidate can gain support locally. If anything, I see a realization that there may be greater strength to inside candidates than to looking for the hero on the white horse from outside."