Back to the Trenches.

Superintendents Who Opt to Return to Principalships and Other Lower-Profile Positions

Al Osborne was young, bright, and moving up fast. At 38, he was offered the superintendency of the Paintsville, Ky., schools. Two years later, he was courted for the same position in Frankfort, the state capital. Both times he grabbed at the chance.

Seven years later, Osborne walked away from the job for which he had spent his entire life preparing. He returned to his former position as a high school principal, a job he says is more time-consuming and demanding than the superintendency he left behind. (See related story, page 29.)

The difference, Osborne says, is that now he occasionally sees a miracle.

"No matter how much you care about the students, the staff, professional development, as superintendent you have to spend a lot of time on the B's-beans, buildings, and buses. They all add up to money," Osborne says.

"Now I work with students who are flexing their muscles, seeing themselves develop, wondering who they are," he says. "I feel my job is a mission. The superintendency was never a mission."

Peace of Mind

Osborne is part of a small but growing number of men and women charting a new course in the American superintendency. They ascend to the top position, grow disillusioned, then retreat down the career track to be a principal, curriculum director, or assistant superintendent. They voluntarily give up higher salaries, larger offices, and a good deal of power and prestige. In return, many say, they find the peace of mind they lost with their last promotion.

Although they come in every temperament and from every type of situation, many, like Osborne, are some of the nation's most promising school system administrators. They turn their back on the job with years left on their contracts, with school boards still voting in their favor.

"Those who leave have not necessarily been unsuccessful. They're just weary," says Gerard Keidel, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators. "The superintendency today is a combination of business, education, and politics. You have to like all three or at least two of the three and accept the other."

Ultimately, Keidel says, "it's the politics that do people in."

Ten minutes into his superintendency, Charles Carlton was slapped with his first grievance from the teachers' union in Canisteo, N.Y. He spent the next two years enmeshed in battle between a strong union and a new school board determined to "trim staff and get back control of the district," he says.

The fight took a personal turn, and Carlton felt himself under siege from board members. "They set expectations that were impossible," says Carlton, now an elementary school principal in the same district. "Sometimes you have to tell them to go to hell, but you bury yourself politically."

Carlton resigned after completing two years of his five-year contract--and after his doctor warned him, "Charlie, if you want to be alive a year from now, you'll get out of that job now."

Uncharted Turf

Nationally, the superintendents' exodus toward lower ranks has caught observers by surprise. No one knows exactly how many leave for lower-level administrative positions, but many state superintendents' associations admit to seeing a small but increasing number each year.

A study of California superintendents in the late 1980s showed that nearly 14 percent assumed a position of lesser responsibility in school districts rather than retiring. In AASA's 1992 national study of school superintendents, 12 percent said they would choose a lower-level position in K-12 education if they had their career to do over again.

The typical departure path, however, is still far more likely to be a move into higher education, private business, or consulting.

Some, like Patricia Hughes of Oneida, N.Y., have built the move into their career path from the start. Hughes intentionally moved from the superintendency of a small district to an assistant superintendency in a larger district to devote herself to the curriculum and staff development issues she enjoyed most. "I know a lot of people who deliberately make the same move," she said. "I've always wanted to be exactly where I now am.

For Hughes, the opportunity arose when her small rural district was consolidated with a neighboring city district.

Others viewed their superintendencies as permanent. When problems arose, they moved back down the career ladder because they were too young for buyouts or adjunct positions in higher education. Like Osborne, many felt they had not accomplished all they set out to with K-12 students.

"They want to contribute, to stay in the profession, but they want something other than the hot seat," says Tracy Dust, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents.

And it's not just that they no longer want their own controversial spot-- they don't want any. In another break with the past, they leave without applying for other superintendencies.

"The difference is we're starting to look at the alternatives, and when you see another district with a situation just as dire as your own, why should you jump on a sinking vessel somewhere else?" says Tom Ryan, who plans to leave his position this spring as superintendent in Aleutians East School District in Sand Point, Alaska, to work as a special education teacher.

Declining Pool

The departure of capable school leaders such as Ryan concerns many observers of school administration. Some wonder if the backwards trickle eventually will become a flood as the job demands and public pressures on the superintendency increase and the job appears less attractive.

In Illinois, Walter Warfield, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, says the number of superintendents leaving for other K-12 positions is negligible and poses no threat to maintaining a healthy pool of administrative candidates.

But Keidel, of the Michigan association, sees it differently. "The pool of qualified candidates is definitely reduced in our state, significantly lower than it was 15 years ago," he says. "The people who are finalists for jobs today would never have made it 15 years ago.

He adds: "There are more good people who enter the superintendency and leave it earlier and there are fewer quality people to go around."

Multiple Pressures

Ironically, the superintendents most likely to leave may be the most passionate, says Dust of the Indiana superintendents' association. "They're the ones who've got their emotions on their sleeve, who are more susceptible to the pressures than anybody."

After 17 years as a principal, James Scriber agreed to move into the superintendency of Morehouse Parish, La. He was a popular administrator whose contract was easily renewed.

"Initially, I thought I'd be there until retired," Scriber says. Instead, he returned to his principal's position after seven years, noting, "The politics wears you thin."

Scriber felt pressure on every level. The national reform agenda was one he did not personally support, yet he watched, powerless, as legislators forced it into every area of his school operation.

"Standardized curriculum, outcome-based education--all the educrats favor those things," he says. "I think it's an excuse for mediocracy. I started looking at the direction we were going and, to be honest, I thought I couldn't any longer be of use to that system."

Each year, Scriber spent more time on the road to Baton Rouge, wrangling with state legislators and department of education officials who made political names for themselves by introducing more reforms. "There was more and more paperwork without any obvious benefit to the kids, and then you'd get home and your own work had doubled," he says.

Most difficult was dealing with local politics. Scriber saw his own energy and professional vision evaporating as he tried to placate a dozen different board of education members with as many personal agendas.

"Sometimes you do things to please them and you get home at night and realize it's not what you believed in at all," he says.

Shattered Visions

Too many school system administrators arrive in their superintendent posts with a vision, only to leave with a long, disheartening string of compromises. Some, upon departing, say they can't remember what they wanted to accomplish when they took the job in the first place.

One reason, as in Scriber's case, is the change in the makeup and mission of school board members.

In the past, most board members represented broad educational concerns, says Arnold Oakes, a senior lecturer in educational administration at Texas A&M University and a former school superintendent. Today, they often run for office representing a small special-interest group or build their platform on a single educational issue. And all of them want direct access to the superintendent.

"Superintendents used to talk to the board president every few days, give Friday updates, and brief them on the upcoming meeting," Oates says. "What we're finding now is that the superintendent is not only taking one to two calls from the -- board president every day, but from the other board members as well.

"If you have to spend that much time listening to concerns and putting out fires," he says, "you're probably not doing work that's rewarding for you.

While he was being courted by board members and offered an unusual five-year contract as a first-time superintendent, Carlton quickly found himself consumed by the labor issues around which the board members had built their successful election campaigns. First, board members viewed him as a miracle worker, he says, then soon turned him into a target for blame when problems seemed intractable.

"When they hire you, you're a god, and maybe in the best of spots, in the best of times, the superintendency could be a wonderful job," he says. "But when the heat is on, you're the one that gets blamed for everyone. Things go bad from the first day you step into the job, I think."

Even when board members remain supportive, superintendents no longer can count on long-term loyalty. School board members today leave their elected positions more quickly than in the past. For the superintendent, it means an ever-changing agenda and shifting base of support.

"You'll have one board that hires you, agrees with your vision, and wants to see you succeed," Oates says. "But very few board members serve longer than one term, so in three years you're dealing with a new board that wants something entirely different. Superintendents often have a very hard time letting go of what they planned to do and adopting a completely different agenda."

Shifting Attitudes

In many cases, the principalship becomes an attractive alternative. Many former superintendents find in it the autonomy, flexibility, and staff and student contact they lost in the top position.

"The superintendent's job was dominated by physical plant maintenance and other budgetary matters," says Tom Withee, a Michigan superintendent who left to become principal of Fordline Elementary School in Southgate, Mich. "The main reason I left was that I missed being directly involved in the day-to-day business education."

Today, Withee relishes the time spent on curriculum, student motivation, and staff development--areas where he says "you can actually see some success."

Being a principal, he says, has given him a chance to be part of a team again after often experiencing the loneliness and professional distance built into the superintendency.

"It wasn't a messy divorce when I left the superintendency, but I'm a happier man now," Withee says. "Every day when I'm shaving, I realize how much I enjoy going in and being a principal."

Conversely, some in the superintendency feel a shrinking sense of authority. They find they are only one of an increasing cast of powerful players that extends from the state legislature to well-organized special-interest groups within their communities.

"There was a time when the definition of quality education in a local community was pretty much what the local superintendent said it should be," says Dust, of the Indiana superintendents group. "These days a variety of entities are defining quality of education for the community, including the state and local politicians, advocates for special education, business leaders, etc.

Some superintendents feel they are on the firing line of public distrust and discontent--with no reserve troops behind them.

"People are in an anarchic mood," says Ryan of the Aleutians East district in Alaska. "They don't want government solutions to things any more, and we're often the biggest representative of Big Brother in our small communities. People are being poisoned by the conservative mood in the country. Public school bashing is an applause line used by every politician."

Unresponsive Public

The superintendents say they suffer from a public perception of educational crisis. And they admit that sometimes, within their own districts, the crisis is real.

In many school districts, state aid is shrinking, buildings are aging, and mandates are mushrooming. Local taxpayers seem in no mood to shoulder an extra financial burden.

Voucher programs, charter schools, and open enrollment threaten to erode a strong constituent base, making it harder to rally community support and to pass money issues. In AASA's latest nationwide survey of superintendents, 69 percent said financial difficulties could make them leave the superintendency.

No matter how stable their districts may currently be, many leave because they see trouble on the horizon.

Scriber, the Louisiana superintendent turned principal, knew that nine of the 10 aging schools in his district soon would need extensive remodeling or replacement. Professional good sense told him to take on the issue before ceiling tiles started falling around students' heads.

He had helped put the district on solid financial footing, enjoyed the confidence of his constituents and his school board, and felt he should have been able to rally support for a necessary bond issue. But when he talked to local politicians at the county courthouse up the street--opinion leaders in his rural Louisiana district--he found no support for a money issue.

"No one would be ugly to me, but the county officials would take me aside and talk to me friend to friend and say, 'We just can't do this,'" he remembers.

"It was hard to hear that, being in a position where I knew we had to do something," Scriber says.

Being unable to rally support for the hard decision--even after enjoying a successful superintendency--was one reason Scriber returned to the principalship.

Before school began the next fall, an elementary school ceiling crashed from one end of a hallway to the other, but the 9-mill bond issue proposed by the new superintendent crashed, too, attracting only 30 percent of the vote.

Scriber is convinced he made the right decision to leave.

Caught Unprepared

Even well-seasoned administrators find they sometimes are unprepared for the rigors of the superintendency. Withee, once the schools chief in Southgate, Mich., entered the superintendency with enthusiasm and a well-ordered plan for improving the schools in his district. Less than four years later, he requested reassignment as an elementary principal.

Withee thought he understood the demands. He had served as assistant superintendent in the same district for eight years. What he didn't foresee was being consumed by budget and labor issues and having his schedule taken over by meetings with consultants, committees, and the public "without any evidence of conclusion of any of the issues.

He was caught off-guard by how removed he felt from the daily workings of education. That fact still surprises him.

"For eight years, I sat one seat away from the hot seat and still I didn't see what it was really like," Withee admits.

He believes administrators considering the top job need an intensive introduction to its pressures and complications and a game plan to cope with them since "the most stressful things about the job are just built into it and aren't going away, he says.

Calling Timeout

That's the reason Dust, of the Indiana superintendents' association, believes the only way to retain promising young superintendents is to offer them sabbaticals early in their careers.

"Generally, when they make the decision to step back, they're coming off years of highly intense pressure," he says. "They still want to contribute at that level, but they wake up and realize they've lost their vision. A sabbatical gives them a way to step back in."

It also offers a timeout to deal with the personal issues that arise out of professional pressures--issues that many exiting superintendents say the profession has ignored for too long.

In AASA's 1992 Study of the American School Superintendency, more than half the superintendents under age 50 said the job caused them considerable or very great stress. Of all superintendents surveyed, 8 percent said family concerns drove them from the job.

William Drury, an education professor at University of Dayton, says candidates for superintendencies ought to consider realistically the job's likely toll on family life, missed activities, the criticism they and their families will endure, and family relocations. Drury, a former superintendent who once did a stretch of 54 consecutive evenings on the job, says the profession has ignored these problems for too long.

The day Al Osborne realized how far job frustrations had spilled over into his personal life was the day he decided to leave the superintendency.

"I found myself looking face to face with my son. I had grabbed my 9-year-old with both hands and lifted him up in the air, over a relatively little thing," he remembers. "It embarrassed me. It scared me. I thought, 'Fool, what are you doing to yourself?'

"I realized the job had destroyed me personally, eaten me up, totally consumed me, and led to my divorce," he says.

Fred Minnick, a former superintendent in Indiana, says his children became adept at reading his moods at the end of a workday. "On a bad day, the littlest thing could set me off," he says. They'd find me back up in a corner of the kitchen, sitting on a corner of the counter. They knew it was a really, really bad day if I had a beer in my hand."

Superhero Traits

The side effects of the job come on subtly, say several superintendents now working as principals. Egotism pushes administrators to move up, then pride blocks them from sharing their difficulties with the job until it's too late. The administrators feel they must leave to salvage their vision, their marriage, or their health.

Yet built into the modern superintendency is a conflicting set of personal characteristics.

"In one sense, if you were picking the ideal personality for the job, you'd pick a Machiavellian," says Dust. "You'd want somebody who understands politics, who makes people feel that, if they cross the superintendent, they'll feel pain later. But then you want somebody who can take that hat off, put his educator hat on and be ethical, fair, honest, and put kids ahead of everything."

Few superintendents can do both. Many feel they are compromising not just professional judgment, but personal relationships, by attempting to.

"You're pulled in so many different directions, asked to make so many tough decisions, that often you go home and don't feel very good about yourself," Dust says. "Pretty soon you're wondering what kind of father and husband, or wife and mother can a superintendent really be?"

Missing Attention

Superintendents who leave often find themselves the envy of their colleagues, some of whom privately confide they'd like to take the same step.

"Of everyone I talked to before I made the decision, not one person asked why I was doing it," said Scriber of Louisiana. "My good friends and my political allies had been asking me for awhile, 'Why you killing yourself like this?'"

Most superintendents who leave say they had contemplated the move for several years. Still, upon leaving, most feel ambivalent about their decision.

"I was in my early 30s and moving up so quickly," says Osborne. "Was I emotionally mature enough then to handle it? There's still a part of me that wants to go back to the superintendency one more time and do a gut-check to see if I should have left it."

Declining health forced Gerald Essington to move from superintendent to assistant superintendent of the Greenfield-Central School Corporation in Greenfield, Ind. The first change he noticed was that his telephone didn't ring any more. The second was that attention had shifted from him.

"I wasn't looked at as before," he says. "Now my former assistant superintendent, who took my position, was receiving the accolades. It's hard not to have people coming to you. There were times I still felt I could have done something for people, but in my position now, I don't have the power to do it."

While initially he felt relieved of the responsibility for planning and overseeing everything in the district, "I later realized it's what I missed the most.

Good Sense

Most superintendents say it is a dash to the ego to leave the top position for a lower rank, much as it was a thrill to assume it. Some chafe at having to abide by someone else's decisions. Others find it hard to adjust to sharp pay cuts.

Still, most say stepping down was the right decision. In a society that seems to value only advancement, some feel they exercised professional integrity and personal good sense in leaving the superintendency for another position in K-12 schooling.

"I think I'm a lot more fun than I used to be," says Michael Kenney, a former superintendent in Leland, Mich., and now director of general educational services for Traverse Bay, Mich., Area District Schools. "When you take on the superintendency the job never really leaves you. As I looked around at my peers, I realized that the job had gotten tougher in the last eight to 10 years, that we weren't having as much fun with it as we used to. After I left, I saw my quality of life improve."

Osborne, who returned to a principalship after two Kentucky superintendencies, says this: "You have to become what you want to become, not what you think others expect of you. For me, the superintendency was a function of simply moving up in the job. It was arrogance. It was egotism. Now I'm going to be who I want to be, and I'm not going to apologize for who I am."

Krista Ramsey is a free-lance education writer in Cincinnati.

Don't Leave Before Pondering These Paints

Leaving the superintendency is a big step, personally, professionally, and emotionally. Just as some administrators enter the job with too much haste and too little forethought, some exit it the same way, experts say.

Here are some points to consider before departing the superintendency for a lower-level school administration post.

* Think carefully before accepting another position in your present school district.

While many superintendents think they can do it, the loss of status and authority is often an obstacle to success in their new role. Hard feelings with current board members or community members can linger. The new superintendent may resent having his or her predecessor so close at hand.

* Don't depart prematurely.

Many superintendents leave their job over one major battle or crisis, often related to funding or school facility issues. They generalize feelings of frustration, believing they have failed in the position rather than just losing one issue. Sometimes, they prematurely leave a job for which they are, in fact, well suited.

Before deciding to go, seek career guidance from mentors, colleagues, or career counselors. While a change may be in order, it may be a less dramatic switch than you anticipate--to a new district, for example, rather than a new role.

* Don't underestimate the rigors of the job.

Many superintendents--especially young or inexperienced ones--underestimate the job's demands and the impact on one's family. They take care of business, but give little thought or planning to physical health, personal relationships, relaxation, or a balanced lifestyle. Changes in these can sometimes ease professional pressures. Self-examination is a first step; professional help may prove the quickest route for long-term changes.

* Ask for help and be receptive to advice.

As a group, superintendents have a hard time asking for help or receiving it, experts say. Many see themselves as problem-solvers and feel they should be able to single-handedly fix their own. In fact, many of the difficulties they face are common to both education and other professions.

Empathy, encouragement, and sound advice are often as close as state or regional superintendents' associations, mentoring programs set up by colleges of education or state departments of education, or informal discussion groups with local administrators.

Professional difficulties often leave administrators with feelings of anger, shame, failure, and sadness. Leaving a position they long dreamed of attaining can be an emotionally wrenching experience.

Healing often comes with distance and perspective. If it doesn't--if anger or depression lingers, or if job issues surface repeatedly or in other areas of your life--seek professional help to get past them.