Janet N. Barry.

She's Got Everyone Reading Off the Same Page

When Janet Barry arrived as superintendent of the Central Kitsap, Wash., schools, she found lots of variations on a theme: 36 different reading programs among the 13 elementary schools and 18 different early-release schedules across the district.

Now, three years later, Barry has everyone reading off the same page in pursuit of a common mission. Her calling card and Central Kitsap's goal: "Every student learning well."

The 1996 National Superintendent of the Year, Barry uses those examples from her own community to demonstrate how public school districts must move beyond their entrenched ways. "We don't function as systems but as schools and school districts jumping on too many bandwagons, too many untried practices when we can't say with evidence this method is better than that method," she says.

This is part of a stark message Barry titles "Getting Down to the Real Basics" that she is delivering during her year in the limelight to audiences nationwide. She points to the social fragmentation and deep skepticism that she believes threaten the future of public schooling in America. Effective superintendents, while acknowledging the public's anger and loss of hope, have learned to mobilize support "through durable improvements and powerful communications."

The task, Barry adds, "calls for a larger concept of leadership."

In Central Kitsap, Barry has impressed on her staff the importance of systematically linking any new creative effort to the district's vision. That has forced some significant adjustments on the part of innovative administrators like B.J. Wise, a principal who has attracted six-digit external funding to several schools she's headed.

Wise, who considers herself a close colleague, says Barry "questions everything we do as to whether it goes toward our (district) mission. ... Anytime you put in a grant proposal, you need to show how it fits. In other places, you come up with a $40,000 grant even though it sidetracks the mission, that's cool, but not here."

The superintendent's push toward a coherent system led to a significant drop in the number of reading programs now in use. The district has adopted common standards for reading achievement at various grade levels. This fall, Central Kitsap schools will share a planning hour each week so all students will be released early on the same day.

"It tells you how far independent decision making had gone that it took 1 1/2 years to get 18 schools to agree on the importance of common planning time," says Barry. "Would the business world understand why it takes so long?"

Her push for greater accountability by staff members has impressed community members almost as much as the improving student test scores. "She has run up good numbers in a very short period of time," says Carl Walske, a retiree who sits on an advisory finance committee. Adds John Borrelli, a former PTA president: "She has instigated a sense of urgency in people."

More gushing praise comes from an unlikely corner: the editor of the local newspaper. Well before Barry was tabbed for the national honor at AASA's national conference in March, Michael Wagar, editor of The Central Kitsap Reporter, vigorously defended the value of the superintendent to the 13,200-student district against anti-tax forces who were questioning her salary.

In one column, Wagar wrote: "She is putting into play a five-year plan that, if successful, will not only give Central Kitsap School District students a fine education, but will also set the example for government entities in the post-post modern age in which we live."

Barry was associate superintendent in Peoria, Ariz., for three years and spent the previous nine years as an administrator in Glendale, Ariz., before she moved to Silverdale, Wash., a 30-minute ferryboat ride from Seattle. She earlier spent eight years working in public relations and the news media, including a stint reporting on criminal courts, before becoming a public educator.

That background serves her well in a role that calls for virtually endless public speaking and writing. "The executive who can speak or write with clarity and power has a huge advantage over those who think well but have trouble communicating," she notes.