Often in systems as large as Fairfax (175,000 students) and Montgomery (144,000), school boards are as much an impediment as a boost to learning. So in the 14 years I have been watching those counties closely, the high quality of their elected leadership has often surprised me. Both have been blessed with board members who understand how school improvement has to work, and were willing to pick superintendents smarter than they were and let them do their jobs.I might have phrased it differently than "willing to pick superintendents smarter than they were", perhaps instead noting that these superintendents, like Loudoun's Superintendent Hatrick, are nationally recognized experts in a very challenging professional field. School Board members bring many indispensable personal and professional qualities to the job, but expertise in management of public educational systems is rarely among them.
The two counties have high family incomes and education levels, but that does not always correlate with intelligent school boards. I think Fairfax and Montgomery lucked out, but that is still worth celebrating.
The management philosophy that Mathews lays out is one that I learned in my training as a US Army officer... pick good people, give them a mission and the necessary tools, and then let them get that job done. Don't try to do it for them.
School Boards should set clearly defined goals and hold Superintendents accountable for meeting those goals. They should not be in the business of micromanagement.
[Washington Post]
It is criminal that the 3 superindendents mentioned in John's post all have an annual compensation package of $300k or greater (eg salary, benefits, etc...). For example Dr Hatrick gets 7 WEEKS OF ANNUAL LEAVE TIME. Must be nice to live a rich lifestyle and travel all over the world, while taxpayers foot the bill. I thought the students and teacher salaries came first?
ReplyDeleteEach will have an annual retirement pension of $100k plus, fully funded by hardworking private citizen taxpayers. Before LCPS asks taxpayers to dig deeper into our pockets why not reduce the costs of all LCPS staff who cost over $120k?
Ummm, Anonymous, you *do* realize that the superintendent is the CEO of a very large organization, right? You get what you pay for, and $120K is not enough for a position with that level of responsibility. Heck, there are managers at my company (which is much smaller) that make more than $120K, and yes, have many, many weeks of vacation. (We start with 4 here and work up.) Asking for quality people to work for pennies is unrealistic, and a sure fire way to attract poor candidates. If you could make twice as much in the private sector, why on earth would you come take on all the nonsense and personal attacks of the public sector? We are not running a charity here, we are running a very large, very high quality organization and should be willing to pay the leader appropriately. I'm not suggesting Wall Street money here, but pay commensurate for the work.
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