Leadership Lite
School Administrator, January 2021 

A Bark That Says ‘Brrrr’

In Ohio’s Ashland City Schools, Buster the Wonderdog has a lot to say about whether students and staff get a favorable snow day call.

Buster, an 8-year-old Maltese and Shih Tzu mix, belongs to superintendent Doug Marrah and his family. Buster has an innate ability to gauge when outside winter temperatures fall too low for student safety. Says Marrah: “He would walk outside and just look at me like he’s saying, ‘This is not good.’”

In 2019-20, Buster was busy as he contributed to five two-hour delayed starts and two snow day decisions by the superintendent. This winter could have Buster up early again, due to the fact the Ashland schools are operating in-person classes five days a week.
 

The Piling-On Effect

Like many superintendents, Mary Ann Ranells of Meridian, Idaho, considers a snow day decision to qualify as her biggest blooper. In her case, it was a “snowpocalypse” in January 2017.

Ranells tells her story this way:

“Closing school for one or two days is deadly for a superintendent. Closing school for six days threatens job security. To make matters worse, when teachers finally came back to school, we had to tell them, according to board policy, we would have to use President’s Day and Martin Luther King Day as makeup days. Heaven help the superintendent who must tell teachers they have to give up planned holidays.

“But, no, this wasn’t the worse part. Because school was closed for so long just before the end of the semester and because our secondary schools are on a block schedule, we decided to change our semester finals’ policy so that the grade on the final would only count if it improved a student’s grade but would not count if it lowered a student’s grade. Oh, dear. I wasn’t certain I would still have a job, but we … worked through the chaos.

“We were trying so hard to help and all we did was make a hot mess out of everything. When I later asked a team of top teachers what we should do if we ever have this situation again, my favorite response came from a high school math teacher: ‘Mary Ann, when you make decisions, make them based on the best of us, not the worst of us.’ I will never forget this lesson well-learned.”


Doubling in Triumph

Perhaps it was only natural that the two superintendents who oversee Valley Center Public Schools — one in California and one in Kansas that are often confused for the other — settle into a friendly bet in the lead-up to the last Super Bowl pitting the San Francisco 49ers against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Ron McGowan, the California superintendent, and Cory Gibson, the Kansas leader, decided the superintendent on the winning side would receive a basket of local goods from the other. So after Kansas City took the title, McGowan provided local treats that included avocados, tangerines, organic fruit juice, nuts and honey. The exchange took place in person in California.

In a video the Kansas district posted on Facebook to relish in glory, Gibson asks McGowan: “Just one question: Who’s the real Valley Center?”

McGowan concedes that claim also belongs to his counterpart, admitting that his Valley Center in California is unincorporated.
 
 

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. Email: magazine@aasa.org. Upon request, names may be withheld in print.