While it may be tempting to dodge stress and controversy, superintendents must strategically engage with the political nature of their jobs to create the best possible conditions for students to achieve.
That was the message of a panel of former superintendents and leadership experts who spoke March 6 at the national conference of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. They spoke as news circulated about a potential executive order by President Trump to start dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, putting uncertainty top of mind for administrators in the audience.
“These are indeed turbulent times,” said Jennifer Perry Cheatham, a former superintendent who is now a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “In my moments of doubt, I remind myself that this is supposed to be hard. What we are setting out to do something extraordinarily ambitious: to provide a high quality education to every child in America, regardless of how they are situated.”
Cheatham and Carl Cohn, a professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University, together lead the Collaborative on Political Leadership in the Superintendency, which works with superintendents, researchers, and educational leadership organizations to help district leaders navigate tumultuous political times. The coalition has recently released new resources, and it has developed a related professional development program at Harvard.
“These days, everything is contested,” Cheatham said. “We wanted to quickly get this [resource] out to as many people as we can.”
Superintendents are civic leaders
While superintendents may view themselves as instructional leaders or organizational managers, they are also civic leaders who must nurture relationships, forge community coalitions, and work hard to win public trust.
“If you are going to create better outcomes for historically underserved students, you have to master the art of politics,” said Cohn, who drew national headlines while serving as the superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District in California in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots. “From my point of view, that message has not changed today.”
Polarizing politics have ratcheted up the intensity for many superintendents as national debates over issues like critical race theory animate local school board meetings. At the same time, schools have increasingly diverse students, surveys show public trust in schools is waning, and leadership turnover remains a persistent concern.
To survive these challenges, superintendents should identify their priorities and limits for compromise, speakers said. For example, a leader may be unwilling to adopt a policy that compromises instructional time, but changing the name of a department or program to win broader public support might be less of a concern.
Superintendents must also carve time in their schedule to regularly meet with the media and engage with various community groups to build strong relationships before a crisis arises, said Caitlin Sullivan, the founder and CEO of Leading Now, an organization that helps cohorts of superintendents navigate their civic roles.
“We really believe that local reality is always more important than national sentiment,” she said.
