To My Central
Office Brethren:
Offended? No
offense was intended, but allow me to retort. First, full disclosure: I am the
Principal who wrote the posts that Sean responded to. And yes, as an old school
LYSer guessed, I am one of you. Indeed I go back to a time before LYS, back
when Cain was the plumber for the state and I was one of the early Restructure &
Redesign principals. That's been a while.
Further
disclosure, I wrote those posts a number of years ago. I was not sending Cain
my criticisms. I was sending Cain my observations and asking for advice on how
to make my new (at the time) school work for children. The dialogue those many
years ago proved to be educational to me, and Cain knew that others could learn
from them also. He just held off on sharing them with the LYS Nation to protect the district I was working for and to protect me. Because at the time, anyone in the know
could have easily figured out the district being described and from there
identify who I was. Again, further
proof that this blog, its writers, and its readers are focused only on improving
schools.
I will say
this, there is too often a disconnect between central office and campus life,
and the higher one moves in school administration, the more likely that
disconnect becomes. It's not intentional; it’s just that the jobs of campus
principals and central office administrators move at different speeds. There is
a constant sense of urgency on a campus that is doing the job right, and that
sense of urgency is often missing in central office simply because central
office leaders and staff do not work in the trenches. Central office is not
doing the day-to-day, hand-to-hand work. For a superintendent, it is easy to
lose almost all sense of urgency since things tend to move in 30-day increments
from one board meeting to another.
This is
obviously not the case for the campus principal, who is constantly faced with
decisions that often have to be made within minutes.
Final
disclosure, within a year of writing these posts from the perfect dysfunctional
storm I became a Superintendent.
As a sitting and now veteran Superintendent of multiple district, I can promise you, the same
issues with central office disengagement can exist in any size district, with
any central office administrator, including the Superintendent. As Cain states,
when schools fail adults are culpable, from the boardroom to the classroom.
In the
perfect dysfunctional storm district that I wrote about, leadership it was
rotten at the top and in many places in the middle. Were there bright spots in
central office? Yes. But the bright spots were not able to pull the district
out the perfect storm.
The lesson
for central office administrators, especially superintendents, is this; LEAD
YOUR DISTRICT, LEAD YOUR SCHOOLS.
1. Remove the
rotten spots and deadweight.
2. Expect and
insist that your campuses move at a faster speed and have greater urgency than
central office.
3. Push your
central office to do their best to keep up.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
- Call Jo at (832)
477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies
available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5
- Now
at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks
CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool)
- Upcoming Presentations: Illinois ASCD Fall Conference (Multiple Presentations),
Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association Fall AP Conference, The
Fundamental 5 National Summit (Multiple Presentations)
- Follow
Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation and
like Lead Your School on Facebook
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