The weight of the superintendency is heavy these days: Beleaguered staff. Exhausted teachers. Angry parents.
So as districts enter the spring鈥攑rime superintendent-resignation season鈥攊t鈥檚 a good time to ask: Will it all come to a head in a wave of superintendents racing for the exit doors?
Preliminary signs indicate an uptick in superintendent retirements and resignations so far this year. Two major recruitment firms for superintendents say they鈥檝e been fielding an unusually high number of RFPs, and internal data from recruitment site also support this pattern.
Those data are bolstered by anecdotes from worried observers.
鈥淎lmost on a regular basis, I hear from a superintendent indicating that they can鈥檛 take it anymore and bail out,鈥� said Dan Domenech, the president of AASA, the School Superintendents鈥� Association. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a combination of stress on the job and being confronted with a no-win situation, when half of parents want their kids in school and the other half want them at home.鈥�
There are reasons to be cautious about reading too much into these early reports. For one thing, high-quality estimates on superintendent tenure are difficult to come by, making it harder to establish a benchmark against which to compare this year鈥檚 hiring cycle.
But if the numbers pan out, the experts say, a newer, less experienced corps of superintendents will be charged with leading the nation鈥檚 schools come fall鈥攁ll while helping them recover from months of disarray and while figuring out how to spend a bonanza in federal cash smartly and sustainably.
Search firms say more boards are putting out requests for leadership talent
As a testament to its concerns about superintendent turnover, the AASA recently launched a support network for superintendents who are under duress locally. It has about 25 in the network and plans to expand it to more, Domenech said.
Recruiters say they鈥檙e seeing some ominous signs, too.
Max McGee, the president of Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, said his firm generally handles about 50 searches in each July-to-June academic year. It is already fielding about 80 searches this school year.
鈥淪ome of them are retiring early of their own accord; some are looking to move to downsized districts; frankly, some have been forced out,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hat we鈥檙e seeing this year is directly related to pandemic issues.鈥�
Data from , similarly found that listings for superintendent jobs, between July 2020 and April 2021, were up by about 10 percent compared with that same time period in 2019-20鈥攁nd are on track to outpace last school year鈥檚 total listings.
Local news reports also predict similar instability. In Idaho, the pandemic appears to be fueling increased turnover, a trend that began a few years back. About a third of the state鈥檚 district leaders will have hired someone new over the past two years,
Traditionally, most hiring falls in the late-fall to early-spring cycle, but this year, the cycle has been pushed back later in the year, said Michael Collins, the president of Ray and Associates, another search firm. His company also handles 40 to 50 searches a year and is already beyond that mark, at about 65 so far.
鈥淚n January, there was this flurry of announcements. It actually happened as the vaccines rolled out and it appeared districts might be able to carry on and go back to live instruction,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd the superintendents who got picked up by March or spring break, now their [former] districts have vacancies.鈥�
Collins said he anticipates 4,000 to 5,000 more superintendent vacancies than usual this year鈥攕ome from those who planned to retire last summer but were persuaded to stay on for another year by desperate school boards. Now that infection rates are trending downward, many of those superintendents are finally following through.
National media, meanwhile, have picked up on the striking and unusual sight of the announced departure of superintendents from the nation鈥檚 three largest school districts within two months of one another. New York City鈥檚 Richard Carranza in March said he would step down. Austin Beutner of the Los Angeles district declined to renew his contract in late April. And just this week, Janice Jackson, who has spent 22 years in the Chicago public schools and became its CEO in 2018, said that she would depart this summer.
Despite national patterns, big-city superintendents are generally staying put
Some observers are cautious about reading too much into those patterns. Top officials at the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 76 such large districts, say so far, the organization鈥檚 member districts have fewer openings in the first four months of this year than they typically do.
Usually there are about 12; this year, it鈥檚 only up to six, noted Michael Casserly, the executive director of the council, and some of those departures weren鈥檛 directly attributable to coronavirus pressures. San Diego鈥檚 Cindy Marten was tapped to take a post at the U.S. Department of Education, and Robert Runcie of Broward County, who is now negotiating the terms of his exit from that district, resigned in the wake of a perjury charge related to grand jury testimony over an alleged case of fraud in the district.
In all, said Casserly, turnover in those large urban districts appears to be periodic and more defined by local events than national catastrophes.
鈥淲hich is not to say that individual turnovers might not be related to something going on in the ether nationally,鈥� he said, 鈥渂ut I鈥檓 not sure that drives turnovers on a grand scale.鈥�
There is no longitudinal, nationally representative sample that tracks how long superintendents stay in their posts and can help pinpoint just how this year鈥檚 hiring cycle might compare with a normal one. Most estimates are based on superintendents鈥� current, rather than their completed tenure.
According to the AASA鈥檚, for example, a plurality of superintendents, about 47 percent, are now in years 2 to 5 of the job and about 28 percent are in years 6 to 10. A seminal 2018 report issued by the Broad Center, which offers leadership and management training for district leaders, tracked big-city superintendents over time and found that they stayed about five and a half years鈥攍onger than conventional wisdom.
