
{"id":13706,"date":"2010-11-11T07:08:48","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T15:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=13706"},"modified":"2010-11-11T07:08:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T15:08:48","slug":"call-your-favorite-superintendent-%e2%80%a6-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/11\/11\/call-your-favorite-superintendent-%e2%80%a6-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Call your favorite superintendent \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 now!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Steve Peha<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nCitizens of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, your school district needs you! With 11 weeks until the application period closes on the superintendent search, we have zero candidates to choose from because the application was only recently posted.<\/p>\n<p>Jan. 31 is the deadline. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also the deadline for our hopes and dreams of bringing real leadership to our district.<\/p>\n<p>The time crunch bodes ill. But there is something we can do, something we <em>must<\/em> do if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to get a reasonable pool of high-quality candidates: help drive this search ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m working to contact talented prospects before everybody shuts down for the holiday season. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent hours talking with top-tier candidates around the country. At present, few are considering applying. None has begun the application process. All are hesitant. <\/p>\n<p>Why the cold feet? Because people with major talent have major jobs, and because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a long and often tedious ordeal to apply for a superintendent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position. The professional commitments of top-tier leaders can rarely accommodate such a compressed timeline. Few leaders of any stature can leave their current job at a moment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s notice, which, in superintendent time, is exactly what our search process would seem to demand.<\/p>\n<p>A member of the school board told me that the board would make no such personal overtures, that they would let the process do the work. I was assured by another board member that there is no pre-selected \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winner\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or even a favorite. This means the field is wide open. I fear, however, that our process will attract only typical candidates, those who happen to chance upon the typical ads we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re placing in typical publications and through the typical state school boards association network.<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not a typical school district. We deserve better than the typical candidates our typical process is likely to attract. And we can do better if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re willing to put in the effort required. But we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t assume that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the process\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on its own will deliver the leader we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking for. <\/p>\n<p>Choosing a superintendent  is the most critical decision any school district has to make. You and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t choose the next one. But we can ensure that our board has good options to pick from.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need: very few people applying; only people who were fired from their previous position; only past superintendents, as opposed to talented non-traditional candidates; only people who want this job because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chapel Hill-Carrboro and they think they can sleep through the next 20 years like we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been sleeping through the past 20 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need Dr. Rip Van Winkle. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be wise to ignore titles and focus on smart people who propose innovative solutions to our most pressing problems.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we do need: a person with a plan to lead teachers and administrators in improving instruction so we can close the achievement gap by raising performance for all students. Sure, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more to it, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it in a nutshell. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a good opening line to use when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking to prospective applicants.<\/p>\n<p>Our best candidates will come from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reform\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sector (Achieve, Teach For America, the Broad Superintendent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Academy, the New Teacher Project, New Leaders for New Schools, etc.), the private sector (our school district is roughly the size of a $100 million company), the independent-school sector (probably the best pool of experienced leadership talent that most closely matches the culture of our district) or from a small set of talented first-time superintendents (innovative district administrators who can lead us with a striking vision into a new era).<\/p>\n<p>You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be an education expert to help us find our next superintendent. I just ask other talented people who they recommend. I then contact these folks by email or phone. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just drop a holiday card in the mail with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153p.s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the bottom about becoming a candidate. Talk to people. Many people. And keep talking until they say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all in this together, folks. If we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get good candidates, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a good super. If we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a good super, we get 20 more years of the same old same old. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost two generations of kids sacrificed on the altar of poor timing. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not how we roll here in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get rolling on finding our next superintendent.<\/p>\n<p><em>Steve Peha is founder and president of Carrboro-based Teaching That Makes Sense Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Citizens of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, your school district needs you! With 11 weeks until the application period closes on the superintendent search, we have zero candidates to choose from because the application was only recently posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13706"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13822,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions\/13822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}