So I was at the Penn State 1:1 Conference this week. Sunday night and Monday, I was working with administrators from all over the state — mostly from smaller districts. I was struck by the way they talked about their schools and districts. Principals talked directly to superintendents, priorities were set by administrators who had been there for a dozen years. I spoke to one superintendent about what it was like to be in his job long enough to see the kids who were affected by a kindergarten initiative graduate… and talking about building support for initiatives over a number of years to get the kind of buy-in necessary to do it right. In short, it was the complete opposite of the experience so many of us in urban education have.
In the three years that SLA has been open, we have had three CEO / Superintendents of the school district, four regional superintendents, multiple changes to our School Reform Commission (a school board of sorts) and even the regional structures have been changed several times. We have seen initiatives come and go, and we have spent a ton of time and energy teaching the new administrations about SLA and what we do that is different than many other schools.
I’d assert that one of the keys to true sustainable innovation is sustainable leadership. We haven’t had a superintendent for more than five years since (I think) Constance Clayton in the early 90s. I wonder what that does to the ability to cautiously and wisely affect change. I wonder what that does to teachers and parents and school-level administrators who live through change without innovation.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of days when the problems that the smaller districts face feel as frustrating as the problems we face in urban structures do. However, I admit that talking to the leaders I met at Penn State made me wonder what it would be like to run a school in a smaller district. I’m not leaving SLA or anything, and I’m an urban educator at heart, but I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a touch of envy when I thought about how much easier it’d to be to sustain innovation if the support and leadership structures weren’t changing all the time.
