Personal Security

School Administrator, August, 1997

Some superintendents will start the new school year in a better position to undertake long-range risks than they have in past years. For the first time in the Sooner State, superintendents can hold multiyear contracts.

As a result of voter approval (by a 3-to-1 margin) of a statewide referendum last fall, local school boards no longer are limited to offering only one-year renewable pacts to their chief school officers. New contracts may run for up to three years.

"Timing and circumstances were such that it passed," says Randall Raburn, executive director of the Oklahoma Association of School Administrators, which represents 531 district superintendents. "We didn't think it would."