A peak performer at the extremes - Profile: Gail A. Uilkema - Brief Article

School Administrator, May, 2002 by Jay P. Goldman

In an administrative career that started by happenstance, Gail Uilkema has worked in schools at both ends of the spectrum--the most impoverished and the most privileged. She has demonstrated that thoughtful leadership makes a powerful difference in whatever the circumstance. For that, she has been crowned the 2002 National Superintendent of the Year.

As superintendent since 1987 in Piedmont, Calif., an upper-middle-class enclave of 2,600 students surrounded by poverty-stricken Oakland, she has mastered the challenge of working with a highly demanding parent population. Those who donate substantial resources to their children's schools, she has discovered, expect a quid pro quo in the form of influence over their children's education.

Piedmont has no students qualifying for the federal lunch program and enjoys local financial support that is the envy of Uilkema's superintendent colleagues. Every four years, community residents renew a self-imposed parcel tax that accounts for 20 percent of the district's $20 million operating budget. At $1,100 per parcel, it's the state's highest.

Parent clubs, along with a local educational foundation with an endowment of $1.5 million, contribute enough funds to enable the district to hire full-time librarians and part-time counselors at all six schools, a rarity these days in California. More than 20 percent of the classroom aides who've been hired for the elementary schools are certified teachers.

"Parents who contribute that kind of money think they own the district," says Piedmont's board president Grier Graff. "Gail is very, very good at keeping parents happy while meeting the broad needs of the district."

Uilkema, acknowledging the extraordinarily high expectations parents hold and the "constant overlay" accompanying every major decision, says: "It takes a unique person to deal with feelings of entitlement." She notes that high-achieving graduates of Piedmont schools must compete with college-bound seniors from suburban districts elsewhere that receive far superior public funding of their educational programs.

While working patiently with an educated and upscale community, she has gained unbridled trust among the staff and parents, in part because she commonly attributes the credit for accomplishments to others.

However, Uilkema's introduction to public school administration unfolded in very different circumstances.

She had just begun work on her doctorate in educational administration at Auburn University in Alabama in 1976 when the dean recommended her for running the segregated city's lowest performing and neglected elementary school, serving a low-income housing project across the street.

At 33, she assumed the principalship of Boykin Elementary School, with its 450 4th and 5th graders, just six weeks into the school year. She was the school's third principal since summer--and no wonder. "The school was a disaster by any measure," Uilkema recalls. There was no equipment or supplies as they had been stolen. Discipline problems consumed everyone's time. No one from the nearby university would come to the school for fear of physical harm.

The desperate hiring of the neophyte paid off. In the recollection of Martha Barton, Auburn's assistant superintendent at the time, the school's transformation was rapid and remarkable.

"She had the courage to act on values. She was as focused on the real issues in that setting as any principal I've known since," says Barton.

The experience launched Uilkema's lifelong commitment to providing quality education to poor children--a point she emphasized in her first remarks as National Superintendent of the Year at the AASA national conference in February. "When President Bush talks about leaving no children behind, we can't leave people around the world outside of this pact."

Uilkema has organized donations of textbooks and other supplies for schools in Kenya, the Philippines and Central America. She plans to offer the $10,000 scholarship that accompanies her new honor to a needy student at her high school alma mater in Granada Hills, Calif.

She also volunteers at an art museum that serves impoverished kids in Oakland, where she can apply her love of children and can-do spirit to a population quite unlike what she serves in Piedmont. A letter that she received from the mother of a troubled student with whom she'd taken special interest said: "You literally saved my daughter's life."

Says Uilkema: "That's what keeps me going."

Jay Goldman is editor of The SchoolAdministrator.

E-mail:jgoldman@aasa.org

RELATED ARTICLE: BIO STATS: GAIL UILKEMA

Currently: superintendent, Piedmont, Calif.

Earlier: superintendent, Orinda, Calif.

Age: 58

Greatest Influence on Career: My parents told me, "You can achieve anything you want to." They emphasized service to others as an important value and always had a positive attitude.

Best Professional Day: A fabulous day of teaching 1" grade when a field trip was cancelled due to rain. We created an outdoor environment in our class, and the students then gave tours of the environment to the rest of the school, incorporating what they had learned.