Four Profiles of Resilient Leadership - school superintendents

School Administrator, June, 2001 by Priscilla Pardini

When adversity strikes a school district, an effective superintendent has the ability to draw on any number of strategies to deal with the problem and help the district bounce back. In fact, one measure of a superintendent's worth is how resilient he or she can be in the event of a crisis.

Jerry Patterson, a former superintendent who now teaches at University of Alabama at Birmingham, has identified five traits he says characterize resilient superintendents. In the face of potential disaster, such superintendents, he says, are flexible, focused, organized, pro-active and positive.

The School Administrator talked with four superintendents suggested by Patterson, each of whom clearly exhibits one of these important traits.

Characteristic: Flexible

The biggest challenge facing Roberta Thompson in her last few years as superintendent of the Anaheim, Calif., City School District was accommodating the almost 1,000 new students enrolling each year. All 22 schools in the district were using portable classrooms, and most were on year-round, staggered schedules with one-fourth of the students on vacation at any one time. When voters rejected a bond issue in 1998 to pay for new buildings, the whole district--one of the largest elementary districts in California with 23,000 students--was forced to adopt the year-round schedule.

Exacerbating the space problem was passage of a state law that same year reducing 1st- and 2nd- grade class size to no more than 20 students per class. "It took a tremendous amount of flexibility to look at things in different ways, communicate our needs and come up with solutions," said Thompson, who retired from her job last June after four years as superintendent.

Planning groups that included teachers and parents were set up at each of Anaheim's schools. "We asked patents to work with us," said Thompson. "We gave them all the information and asked them for their ideas."

The first step was to reduce the student-teacher ratio by hiring extra teachers and putting teams of teachers in each 1st- and 2nd- grade classroom. But one year later in 1999, the district was forced to go to a staggered schedule for 1st and 2nd graders. Under that plan, early-session students begin their day at 7:30 a.m. with late-session students starting at 10:30 a.m. The two sessions overlap during lunch and physical education.

"These were huge issues," Thompson said. "When we went to year-round school, siblings were on different schedules, and when we went to the staggered sessions, everyone wanted morning (classes). But because they had been given all the information and had gone through the process, 99 percent of the parents could see there was really no other option.

Although the district continues to seek long-term solutions to its space problems, Thompson takes pride in the fact that students in almost every school in the district are achieving. The gains come despite a 40 percent mobility rare, and the fact that 80 percent of students are living at or below the poverty level and 62 percent speak little or no English. She traces the results in part to the success of the district's team-teaching program, which was supported with an extensive staff development effort.

"We found teaming created great energy and that when people work together you get a better product," she said.

Thompson, who is now setting up a consulting practice that will focus on leadership issues, says challenges such as those she faced in her last few years in Anaheim are good for schools and their leaders.

"I think the more difficult the challenge, the more it forces you out of the box, to see things from all sides," she said. "It allows you to push the edges of innovation and seek better ways of doing things."

She encourages other superintendents to seek out ideas from all available sources. "Unless you're seeking other people's perspectives, you can t refine your own."

Thompson's decision to retire after working for 38 years in Anaheim underscores her ability to be flexible. "I loved being superintendent," she said, "but I believe there are all kinds of ways we can experience life, and I didn't want to limit myself."

Characteristic: Focused

Dave Schmidt, superintendent in Waukesha, Wis., is well aware that a single catastrophic event has the potential to derail the progress of a school system.

Last fall, Schmidt found himself in the midst of such an event when more than 30 students at Waukesha's Bethesda Elementary School were infected with the E. coli bacteria. The outbreak consumed much of Schmidt's time over several weeks as district staff and municipal health officials worked to determine the source of the contamination.

As critical and important as the situation was, however, it never threatened to undermine the district's long-range mission.

"Even when the going gets tough, you can't forget your priorities," Schmidt said. "Whether you're talking about budget cuts, E. coli or an upcoming referendum, you can't lose sight of boosting achievement. You have to keep going back and talking with your administrators about how it's going. These other things are important, but they come and go."