Leadership Lite
School Administrator, November 2017



Not Up for the Rigor
It had been a few years since he attended school as a student, so Mark Church spent a full day shadowing a 7th grader to get a fresh perspective. His host, Katie Hicks, said she gave Church, the superintendent in Franklin County, Va., a prep talk in advance about what he should wear and what he should bring and “all this other stuff.”

Church’s day included bus rides, a full array of classes and lunch with his much-younger classmates. By 11 a.m., he told a TV reporter for WSET: “This has been a long day thus far.” The afternoon math test didn’t go well either.

Church plans to pick a different grade level next year — maybe one with more basic computations. A Shadow in Neon
Robert Malay figured the best way to gather intelligence about school day operations was to go incognito. That meant attire consisting of faded jeans and plaid shirt plus a neon Nike backpack. And maybe that did the trick for Malay, superintendent of New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 29 in Keene, N.H.

During a day of shadowing in plainclothes at Keene High School, Malay used a block of unassigned time in the schedule of the junior he was tailing to pose an open question about school start times. No one apparently caught on to the fact they were facing their school district’s top administrator.

After spending a day at the high school, Malay summarized his experience in a terse e-mail: “I realized that being a student is no joke — the struggle is real, #EXHAUSTED!”

 

Back for More Fun
Three former superintendents in Kentucky earlier this year assumed seats on the board of education in districts they once led. One of them, Lana Fryman, defeated two opponents for a spot in Bourbon County just two years after leaving her decade-long superintendency.

Meanwhile, two ex-superintendents who completed terms on the school boards in the communities they served were voted out of office.

SOURCE: Kentucky School Boards Association

The Inspection Clause
As superintendent in the 600-student Royall School District in Elroy, Wis., Mark Gruen attempts to visit every classroom just about every week. That makes him a familiar face.

During a visit to the elementary school around the year-end holidays, one young boy asked Gruen whether he was there just to ensure all of the students were behaving.

“I said, ‘Yes, that is one of the reasons I check in,’” Gruen indicated.

“So you are kinda like Santa Claus?” the boy replied.

“Yes, just like Santa Claus checking in to see who is naughty and who is nice.”

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.