My View
‘I Wouldn’t Want Your Job’
BY JIM MAHONEY/School Administrator, September 2020

IN THE EARLY 1990S, Ohio was experiencing a much worse than anticipated winter. I was a superintendent of a rural district east of Columbus who ended up cancelling classes for more than 20 days. Athletic contests were postponed, school events were scrapped, and people huddled in their homes for most of two months, coping with unrelenting bad weather.

In this era pre-internet, there were arguments in the state legislature over how school days should or could be made up. Should we extend the hours each day or extend the school year into summer? Cancel spring break? Everyone had an opinion.

I remember being inside a grocery store when a woman I did not know approached me and asked, “Are you the school superintendent?“ After I said I was, she shared her strong views about what she thought I should do to make up the lost class time and added memorably, “I wouldn’t want your job.”

Complexity Abounds

“I wouldn’t want your job” is the clarion call for leadership. When others say that to you, you know they need your leadership the most. If it were easy, anyone could do it.

Now in the midst of the long-running COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges for education leaders are anything but easy. Leaders this fall are trying to provide learning paths that accommodate parents who are fearful about sending their children to school and those who want to their kids back in class with safety protocols in place. The same fears are true for staff members too.

Add to that complexity the difficulty of transporting students safely, serving lunches and other meals and protecting one another against the spread of the virus. School leaders are thinking not just about the academic needs of students but the toll this extended isolation is taking on their social and emotional needs as well.

They’re being asked whether literacy in the primary grades can really be taught remotely. Who will watch children at home if parents must go to work? What happens if a student or staff member tests positive at school for the virus? You get the idea. You don’t have to drink a gallon of milk to know it’s spoiled. That’s what makes this a “I wouldn’t want your job” moment for superintendents.

How are local education leaders responding in a sea of noise from federal and state leaders? By considering all the options for students and parents, with empathy and understanding because those leaders live in the communities in which they lead. With common sense but not risk-free solutions.

They don’t have time to tweet or appear on national news channels. They are too busy doing the actual grunt work of leading — deploying safety measures for an uncertain future, assigning staff, contracting third parties for specialized services, listening to parents, fielding advice from board members, getting technology to those who don’t have it, supporting new innovations, etc. Doing the job that nobody wants.

Exemplary Servants

I’ve never been more proud to be a retired superintendent because of the current professionals in this role. Over recent months, I have heard from many of them as they make plans, not speeches, and as they take action, not continually debate. They demonstrate compassion, not callousness. Yes, they make decisions, yet remain flexible as new information surfaces.

The late CEO Max De Pree, who wrote Leadership Is an Art, once said: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant.”

These superintendents want this job they fill today, and they represent servant leadership at its best. Someday, the sun will fall on COVID, and we all will be left with important lessons. The pain will subside, but the pride should last forever. We ought to be thanking our education leaders who are stepping up to take on the job nobody wants to do.

JIM MAHONEY, a retired superintendent, is executive in residence with the George Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Twitter: @redbrickhill