Tag: superintendent leadership
Superintendent-Aspirants Should Know How to Use Board Spear Carriers
The September 21,2020 post at this blog (https://boardsavvysuperintendent.com/david-schuler-on-preparing-aspiring-superintendents-for-the-top-spot/) features my video interview with Dave Schuler, Lead Teacher of AASA’s Aspiring Superintendents Academy and former AASA Chair, who discusses the mission, goals, and accomplishments of the Academy. Dave and …
Even Superb Performance Won’t Save a Badly Eroded Board-Superintendent Relationship
When I walked in Rich’s office for our weekly project review meeting, I found him slumped at his desk looking distraught. When I asked him what’d happened, he just said “take a look,” handing me a form. It was the …
Superintendent Leadership on the Governance Front: An Emerging New Model
Over the course of my 35-plus years working with superintendents and their school boards, I’ve conducted hundreds of one-on-one interviews with superintendents, preparing for retreats and educational workshops. One of my standard questions relates to processes superintendents have put in …
Transforming Annual Budget Preparation Into a Higher-Impact Leadership Tool
I’ve never come across a superintendent who wasn’t pretty much an expert in the art of annual budget preparation by the time she first takes the helm of a district. This isn’t the least surprising when you think about it. …
The Chief Staff Liaison: Lynchpin of a High-Performing Board Committee Structure
While preparing for a four-hour Zoom work session recently with the superintendent and cabinet of a large Midwestern school district, focusing on preparation for the launch of a new board committee structure, I reflected on a seminal learning experience early …
What Are You Paying Your Board President?
A few years ago, I was chatting over lunch with a superintendent about her brand new board president. She was feeling pretty apprehensive since her relationship with the last president had been really rocky. He’d resisted her overtures to work …
3 Superintendents on Meeting the Community Relations Challenge in Turbulent Times
In the best of times fostering a positive district image in the eyes of community members and building close, productive relationships with key stakeholders are daunting challenges. If the parents of our students were our districts’ only “paying customers,” external/stakeholder …
Shared Leadership Traits of Successful Superintendents and Master Teachers
In Chicago recently to present a program for nonprofit chief executives on board-CEO relations, I made a side trip to visit a well-regarded nonprofit corporation, Smith Crossing, a retirement community southwest of the city. During my brief visit, I had …
Boosting the Governing IQ of the Superintendent-Aspirants in Your Cabinet
Last August, sitting in on a Cabinet governance work session that Ehren Jarrett, Superintendent of the Rockford (Illinois) Public Schools, was facilitating, I observed a consummate board-savvy chief executive in action. Over the course of four hours, Ehren and his …
Your Board President: a Primo Stakeholder You Neglect at Your Peril
The special board work session had been scheduled to consider a key recommendation coming out of the daylong board-superintendent-cabinet governance retreat three weeks earlier: replacing the board’s dysfunctional silo committees (e.g., curriculum and instruction) with committees aligned with the board’s …
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