Two Superintendents, One Home

School Administrator, March, 2000 by Priscilla Pardini

Spouses confront agonizing logistics while establishing ground rules for dinner talk when both work as district superintendents

When Mary Ward was superintendent of the Ingram Independent School District in central Texas, she would occasionally encounter angry parents who were anxious to transfer their children out of neighboring Harper Independent School District into her school system.

Ward usually gave the parents a few minutes to air their grievances, which sometimes centered on the alleged foibles of the Harper superintendent, before gesturing to the picture of her husband sitting on her office desk and courteously telling her visitors she was sure "Mr. Ward" had his reasons for whatever action he had taken.

"Some people never did put us together," laughs Mary, who is, indeed, married to James D. Ward, the superintendent in Harper.

The Wards are one of a small, but intriguing phenomenon--superintendents who are married to superintendents. Nationally, The School Administrator has identified 27 such couples. (Dozens of other situations exist where one spouse formerly served as a superintendent.)

In some cases, the two met and married relatively early in their professional careers, when each was teaching or serving as a principal. They then moved up through the administrative ranks together, raising children along the way.

In other situations, they met later in life, often in graduate school pursuing doctorates, and now are in second marriages with blended families made up of grown children.

To be sure, these couples have much in common--stress and long hours on the job, for example--with other high-powered, professional couples working in two different fields. Yet superintendent couples often find themselves confronting rather unique challenges. Assuming they want to live together, each needs to land one of the relatively small number of superintendencies available in any given area. Subsequently, they may find themselves competing against each other for everything from winning the conference football championship or county spelling bee to hiring the most qualified teachers available locally. And, of course, everyone wants to know, "What do you talk about at night?"

Still, all those who were interviewed say the benefits of being married to another superintendent far outweigh the negatives.

Molly Helms, who never imagined being a superintendent, let alone also being married to one, thought it would be more difficult than it has turned out to be. "But my experience has been wonderful," says Helms, who runs the 996-student Pollock Pines School District in northern California, 12 miles from Placerville Union School District, where her husband, V. Donald Helms, is superintendent. "I'd endorse it heartily."

Too Much Togetherness?

So what's the reaction when people find out that Veronica Stalker, superintendent of the Waukee, Iowa, Community School District, is the wife of Chuck Stalker, superintendent of the Wellsburg-Steamboat Rock Community School District 90 miles away in Wellsburg, Iowa? "They're fascinated," she says. "They love to ask us about it."

But Tom McDonald, superintendent of Columbia School District 206 in Hunters, Wash., and Evergreen School District in Gifford, Wash., says people often are incredulous when he tells them that his wife, Pat, is superintendent of the neighboring Inchelium, Wash., School District. Search consultants, in particular, were dubious about the McDonalds finding two superintendencies in close proximity.

Is it possible for two such high-level public officials to experience too much togetherness? It is, say experts such as Catherine Chambliss, chair of the psychology department at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., who has studied spousal relationships when both husband and wife work in the same field.

She says spouses who share the same career run the risk of having their personal lives eclipsed by professional issues. "You have to learn how to manage the times when you are fed up with the shop talk, the second guessing, the advice," says Chambliss, a psychologist married to a psychologist.

Jerry Cross, superintendent in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, and part of a husband-wife superintendent team in southern California, agrees that dual superintendent couples could easily fall into the trap of totally immersing themselves in school business. "The first 20 minutes or so after we get home, Gwen and I debrief," he says, referring to his wife, Gwen Gross, superintendent in the Ojai Unified School District. "Then we declare a timeout. Otherwise, it would be too much."

The Helmses, superintendents based in northern California, often have lengthy discussions about issues and problems associated with their jobs. "But there are times when one or both of us has had a bad day and we say, 'Let's not talk about it,"' says Molly Helms. "And on weekends we rarely discuss anything to do with school."

Even the Wards, who according to Mary, "talk shop all the time," reached the point not long ago where enough was enough. On a trip last summer to Canada, she says, "We established a ground rule that we wouldn't talk about school. And we didn't--for 10 days."