Leadership Lite
School Administrator, August 2018



He Makes House Calls
Tom Braddock, principal of Evergreen Avenue Elementary School in Woodbury, N.J., makes it a practice to visit the homes of several students every Friday. He comes delivering a certificate in the student’s name and a pencil that says “My principal is proud of me.”

Of the 320 pre-K to grade 5 students, he has made it to the homes of all but a few during each of his first two years. He averages 15 homes a week.

“You would think I was Santa Claus or a celebrity coming to their home,” Braddock told the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J. Sometimes the first-year principal receives an invitation to stay for dinner.

“My Fridays are absolutely amazing,” Braddock said.



Not Her Usual Color
It took an individual whose allegiance straddles the border between two neighboring school districts to set in motion a friendly wager over a high school football rivalry in western Pennsylvania. Eric Holtzman, business manager of the Waynesboro schools and a board of education member in the Greencastle-Antrim district, established the betting terms of a football game between the two high schools last fall.

Kendra Trail, Greencastle-Antrim superintendent, and Tod Kline, Waynesboro superintendent, agreed that the superintendent of the losing side would wear its rival’s football jersey for a day on the job. That meant Trail subsequently appeared in the local newspaper donning the purple outfit of the Waynesboro Indians after the latter scored a 27-24 overtime win a few days earlier.

Holtzman admitted he was “the guilty party” behind the arranged wager, but noted the friendly contest was held in conjunction with a combined training session for both dis-tricts’ administrative teams.
SOURCE: Echo Pilot, Greencastle, Pa.
 

A Nostalgic Return
You can come home again as a superintendent, and Ryan Saxe is proving it.

After several years working a series of jobs in Manatee County, Fla., Saxe returned last fall to Cabell County, W. Va., as its new superintendent. The 35-year-old spent his open-ing day visiting the elementary school and high school he had attended as a student a couple of decades earlier. Owing to the passage of time, Saxe found his most memorable teachers, as well as the principals and their secretaries, had moved on.

But he did get a dose of nostalgia through the choice of his tour guide that day — Rhonda Smalley was Saxe’s marching band director during his student days and now is a member of the school board.


Appealing Job Title
The Science Museum of Virginia, based in Richmond, has a full-time position that would be the envy of any educator who loves working with kids — director of playful learning and inquiry.

 
 
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.