Steve Peha
We need a new superintendent and we deserve great leadership. To get the best woman or man for the job, we need the best plan for the job. This means making changes before the search process begins.
First, we must suspend the current five-year strategic plan. Serious leaders want to lead. They don’t want to follow someone else’s plan; they want to execute their own. If you don’t think this matters, ask President Obama how much he enjoys struggling with his predecessor’s military and economic leftovers. Superintendent candidates must know that they will lead a new effort to create a new strategic plan as soon as they arrive.
If we don’t do this, we present an unattractive opportunity. We also end up having to worry about three unfortunate outcomes: (1) a new superintendent tied to an old plan for what will likely be the full term of his or her initial contract; (2) a new superintendent who may have little commitment to or understanding of the plan set by his or her predecessor; and (3) since the odds of success for any district’s multi-year strategic plan are low, we may find ourselves in the extremely awkward position of having to fire someone who played only a small role in this failure, or retaining someone who failed to deliver promised results when the job was accepted.
The second thing we must do is commit publicly to addressing the two problems serious school leaders want most to address: closing the achievement gap and helping kids attain college-readiness. We can best demonstrate our commitment to these goals by replacing the district’s mission statement with the following: “By 2020, all high school seniors will have the skills and scores necessary to succeed in college if they choose to attend.â€
This aspirational “2020 Vision for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools†will be extremely attractive to our nation’s most attractive leaders. It also will demonstrate our eagerness to respond proactively to our state’s recently adopted college- and career-readiness standards created through the work of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (corestandards.org).
Soon we will have to meet these goals as a matter of law. Why not declare our commitment to do so now when it would help us attract great leaders? Outstanding candidates want to work for districts that want to lead. To attract great educational leaders, we must align ourselves with the values of great educational leadership.
Finally, the best leaders know that effective leadership is a team effort. That’s why they often have their own leadership teams. We must be explicit in saying that the new superintendent will have our full support in reviewing the performance of district office and building administrators – and in replacing people, if necessary, with others of his or her choosing.
By suspending our strategic plan, by aligning our mission with that of our state, our nation and our nation’s top educational leaders and by offering our new superintendent the opportunity to build the best leadership team, we will create a position that will attract the top candidates. If we present a less-attractive opportunity, we may have less-attractive candidates to choose from.
In order to maximize our chances of securing top talent, we must also keep in mind that people chosen for superintendent positions often decline the offers almost as soon as they receive them. Why? Because superintendent candidates evaluate their potential employers just as critically as their potential employers evaluate them. If the hiring district is not well organized, if the board or the community seems dominated by special interests or seems otherwise too demanding or if the selection process is lengthy and onerous, the best candidates are likely to pursue better opportunities that are a better fit for their skills and aspirations.
Sometimes, to ambitious change-oriented candidates, districts appear less flexible, less prepared and more highly politicized in reality than they do in reputation. I once watched a district lose its top three candidates in just a month. If this happens to us, we may have to repeat the search process during a second year – a costly, time-consuming and embarrassing situation that may mark us as a district inhospitable to top talent.
We need top talent in the top position here in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. The challenges we face – especially the challenge of closing a decades-old achievement gap – will require extraordinary talent, ingenuity and commitment. We can’t afford to lose the best leaders available to us or to fail to attract them in the first place.
Steve Peha is founder and president of Carrboro-based Teaching That Makes Sense Inc. He blogs for The Citizen at carrborocitizen.com/education