Competing pressures put strain on school principals, study finds

By Cheri Carlson

Monday, January 2, 2012

California principals are facing shrinking budgets and mounting responsibilities to lead teachers and keep schools running — creating competing pressures that may make the job untenable, a study has found.

Principals reported working 60 and sometimes 70 hours a week. As budget cuts thinned the ranks of support staff, they juggled roles as teachers, community liaisons, nurses, athletic directors, crisis managers and budget gurus.

"The consensus was that even if a principal can do each of several things well, it is tremendously difficult to do them all well at the same time," according to the recently released report from the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group.

As part of its research, the group surveyed 600-plus principals throughout California and followed up with phone interviews with principals, veteran teachers and other administrators. A third of principals said a lack of time created barriers to improving teacher quality.

Meanwhile, the state has an increasingly veteran teacher workforce and a relatively inexperienced corps of principals, the study states. Half of the state's principals have been in the job for five or fewer years, based on survey results. Half have been at their schools for three or fewer years.

Locally, more than a dozen first-time principals took jobs in public schools this school year.

"I think it's a trend you're going to see accelerating," said Dan Stepenosky, deputy superintendent in the Las Virgenes Unified School District. A lot of administrators in the state are close to retirement age, he said.

Officials at the Center for the Future of Teaching recommend providing formal mentoring for principals, which some local districts already have. Other recommendations included creating professional learning communities for principals to allow them to collaborate, and developing strategies to support principal retention.

Las Virgenes has three new elementary school principals this year. Their backgrounds and expertise vary.

District officials matched them up with mentors and held a principal's academy, bringing in staff members from maintenance directors to union leaders. Topics ranged from watching budgets to building relationships.

The support helps, as does the experience of other staff members at schools, said Jeremy Resnick, a former assistant principal at Agoura High School now in his first year as principal at Round Meadow School in Las Virgenes Unified.

He telephoned veteran principals regularly in the beginning of the school year for advice on handling operation issues. So far, the year is going well, he said. "I"m having a blast in my position," Resnick said. "I don't feel overwhelmed. I don't feel stressed."

With a veteran staff of teachers, Resnick thought a lot about how to approach his leadership position. "I didn't walk in pretending I knew everything," he said.

He tried to be honest about his strengths and also recognize the talent already at the campus. "It doesn't mean we don't have room for growth, but I think it would be silly to not honor the experience they have and use it as an asset," Resnick said.

While principals have to take on more responsibilities because of several years of budget cuts, so does everyone else in public schools, said Kelsie Sims-Schneider, principal of Sunset School in Oak View.

"We're all feeling that crunch, from the classroom teachers to our classified staff to our maintenance staff," said Sims-Schneider, a former principal of El Camino High School at Ventura College.

Getting into classrooms is her top priority, she said. "If it's not made a priority and not built into my daily schedule, it can be hard to get into classrooms."

California schools have an average of about 300 students to every administrative staff member — the fifth highest ratio in the nation, according to 2009-10 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

It can lead to a trade-off between crisis management and instructional leadership, said Stepenosky, who was 32 when he became principal at Beverly Hills High School. Trying to move some of his clerical work out of the school day, he would answer email when he woke up in the morning and after he got home at night.

"I wanted to be present during the day, available for staff, available for students, and to maximize my chances for getting into the classrooms," Stepenosky said.

The most important thing is the relationship between teacher and student, he said. "If the principal is there, monitoring and supporting the relationship ... it's just a win-win for everyone."

Resnick, who keeps a spreadsheet to track his classroom visits, said spending too little time in classrooms was one of his biggest concerns. It's not always easy, but there is time, he said.

"I have to be very conscious about it and calendar it and put it on my schedule to visit classrooms, so I don't set up a meeting or get caught up in emails," Resnick said.

He recently gave his teachers a survey to fill out about his leadership, which showed he was doing a good job at visiting classrooms. But teachers sometimes wanted more feedback, he said, which he plans to focus on more.

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