Leadership Lite
School Administrator, March 2017

An Upper Hand on the Forecasts
After receiving a series of e-mails from a high schooler authoritatively offering his meteorology services to the superintendent’s snow day decisions, Stephen Joel was intrigued enough to pay the young man a visit.

The head of schools in Lincoln, Neb., was mighty surprised to find Kyler Johnson was not just a teen out to influence his snow calls. Johnson, rather, was a certified junior meteorologist with enough sophisticated weather forecasting equipment to have the local media outlets drooling. The student had created a website, Nebraskastormhunters.com, and accumulated 6,400 Twitter followers.

Joel was so impressed he added the youth, now a high school senior, to his weather advisory team. “He sends me updated information that seems more timely and in-depth than I can get from weather sites,” says Joel.

Johnson has had to resist his friends’ repeated requests over the years to sway the superintendent’s school-closing decisions.


Small Town That Empowers
One high school west of Fort Worth, Texas, can lay claim to producing eight public school superintendents over the past three decades.

That distinction can be made by C.F. Brewer High School in the West Settlement Independent School District. The school today enrolls 6,700 students.

None of the eight grads has returned home to lead the White Settlement schools.

SOURCE: Texas Lone Star, Texas Association of School Boards


On Call for Every Need
When you’re the superintendent of a thinly staffed school district, you need to be ready at a moment’s notice to apply your hand at just about any need.

In Austintown Township, a district outside Youngstown, Ohio, with 5,000 students, Vincent Colaluca spent one day donning a hair net in a school cafeteria preparing lunch for students and staff.

The week before, Colaluca took to the wheel of an eight-passenger school van to transport three young students at the end of the school day when road construction prevented their regular school bus from making it to their homes.

SOURCE: WFMJ-TV, Youngstown, Ohio


Getting His Hands Dirty
During his year as interim superintendent of the Vallejo, Calif., Unified School District, Peter Corona authorized the district to buy a used garbage truck and to hire a driver in order to improve the trash collections around the district. Then he made arrangements for the garbage to be dropped at the town dump, measures saving thousands of dollars.

Eager to ensure the new trash process went off as planned, Corona rode along with the district’s garbage collector on one of the first days. At the end of the run, the garbage truck pulled up near the entrance of the central office and the driver laid on the horn, sending staff outside to see their superintendent in a suit inside the cab of the trash truck.



Short, humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration should be addressed to: Editor, School Administrator, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Fax: 703-841-1543. E-mail: magazine@aasa.org. Upon request, names may be withheld in print.