This Superintendent's Workday Has No End.

Late-Night Advice

Setting: The home of Superintendent Arnold Goldberg in Shoreham, N.Y. It is 1 o'clock on Sunday morning.

Dramatis Persona: Goldberg, asleep in his bed.

Action: The phone rings. Goldberg is groggy as he answers, then tries to respond to interrogation.

"Is this the home of Superintendent Goldberg?"

"Yes, who is this please and what time is it?"

"Never mind the time, this is Mr. Brown calling. Where is my daughter?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Brown. I don't know you or your daughter or her whereabouts."

"Aren't you the superintendent? There was a dance at your high school last night and my daughter was given a midnight curfew. She is an hour late and not home. What are you going to do about it?"

"Well, Mr. Brown, have you thought about contacting the high school principal?"

"What, and wake him at this hour?"

From a Higher Authority

Lyn Burningham, the principal at Riverside Elementary School in Sandy, Utah, was sitting in the back of a kindergarten teacher's classroom to conduct an annual assessment.

Overcome by curiosity, one boy kept looking back at Burningham until he finally walked up to her, tugged at her jacket and asked, "Mrs. Principal, are you the lady in the roof?"

Burningham looked puzzled until the youngster added: "When you talk all the time, it comes out of the roof."

Don't Push That Button

The last thing you should do when angry or exhausted is send an e-mail message.

That ranks as caution No. 3 on "The 10 Commandments of E-mail," published recently by the Harvard Business School.

Transfer of Power

Pat Crawford, a central-office administrator in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, was shooting photos of Donna Petrelli's 1st-grade class at Greenfield Elementary when students received a visit by Sandra Day O'Connor, a/k/a a high school student dressed as the judge in observance of Women in History Month.

Petrelli had described O'Connor as justice in the most powerful courtroom in America And what court might that be, she asked.

The question stymied most of the youngsters- except for one boy who excitedly waved his arm "I know," he announced "Judge Judy's Court."

BOARD WATCH

(An occasional collection of unintentionally amusing and offbeat actions of state and local school boards and their members)

Meeting in the Dark

It's been nearly two decades since the Broward County, Fla., school board scheduled its twice-monthly meetings in the evenings.

But a newly elected board whose three new members have school-age children figure it's time to acknowledge the needs of today's working parents.

So instead of conducting every meeting at 1 p.m. at the district's downtown Fort Lauderdale headquarters, one meeting each month begins at 5 p.m. at one of the county's 23 high schools.

Old and Out

Shelby Rhinehart may well be the longest-serving school board member in America, but apparently his colleagues don't think well of that 43-year record.

Rhinehart, who's also a representative to the state legislature, filed suit recently against the Van Buren County, Tenn., Board of Education to prevent fellow board members from unseating him as chair, a position he hasn't relinquished since his first term on the board in 1956.

The Sparta Expositor, the local newspaper, reports that younger members who recently gained election to the board want their turn in the seat of power. Some questioned the hoard's wisdom in filing suit since Rhinehart had only six months remaining in his term before standing for re-election.

Short-Term Insurance

LAI Ward Howell, an Atlanta-based executive search firm, makes this promise about any superintendent search it conducts: If the person you hire at the end of our search, fails to, stay for at least one year, we will conduct a second search at no charge.

"We've been in this business 10 years, and it's only happened to us once," says Charles Taylor, a partner in the firm, which has conducted numerous higher education searches and half dozen superintendent searches over that time.