Principal: A Tougher Job, Fewer Takers

The increasingly thankless task of leading public schools is making it harder to find top-notch principals at a time when the demand for them is on the rise.

The reasons: Fifteen-hour workdays. Unending paperwork. And the ever-increasing role of school board politics, to name a few.

Plenty have the credentials for the job. Many don’t want it.

“Five years ago I maybe got one call from superintendents saying give me some [candidates’] names,” said Nadine Baretto, executive director of the Orange County chapter of the California School Leadership Academy for current and aspiring principals. “Last year, out of 28 districts in the county, 14 called and said they’d [advertised] two or three times and found no matches.”

June Million, spokeswoman for the National Assn. of Elementary School Principals in Arlington, Va., said “we see a definite nationwide shortage” of principals.

The disenchantment with the job stems from a tide of changes in education over the past several years, principals and other educators say. Parents are getting more involved in schools--and making more demands. And, as education becomes a top concern among politicians, continual reforms are passed, creating never-ending changes in educational direction. Bilingual education? Just went out. Phonics? Just came (back) in.

On top of that, principals worry that the renewed emphasis on standardized testing will hold them responsible for their students’ scores, no matter what outside factors such as poverty or family problems might be beyond their control.

The increasing turnover of politically elected board members and politically appointed superintendents makes many school districts more precarious places to work. And budget cutbacks have meant fewer support staff members--and more work for principals.

Traditionally, educators sought to become principals because they could put their stamp on a school. They could shape the school’s educational approach, set the standards for its teachers, and be a cheerleader for student achievements.

Winnie Washington, principal at Eshelman Elementary School in Lomita for eight years, likens it to the difference between being a sailor, working as part of the crew, and being captain, steering the ship.

But these days, according to Washington, the job is more like swabbing the decks.

A Bad Start to a Long Day

On a recent Monday, Washington arrived at 7:30 a.m. to find a staff coordinator and three teachers out sick. Only one substitute was available. Three angry parents were in her office, but they had to wait while she sent the students whose teachers were absent to other classrooms.

Then Washington talked to the parents, wrote out a lesson plan for the substitute teacher and did the absent staff coordinator’s job, running a scheduled meeting for assistant teachers. That done, she learned that a bus driver forgot to pick up a special education student. She drove to get him herself.

“This was all before 9:30 a.m.,” Washington said.

Sharon Maloney saw her Laguna Beach elementary school through the emergency evacuation caused by the city’s 1993 wildfire, one sliding hillside, two financial crises, four superintendents and the transition to 20-student primary classes.

Then Maloney, who has three teenagers and ailing parents to care for, experienced an epiphany: As one of her many responsibilities, she taught a classroom while waiting for a late substitute--and realized that she was disappointed when the substitute showed.

So, last May, she followed her heart out of the principal’s office and into a third-grade classroom.

“I’ve learned more about plumbing, electricity, roofs, blacktop, goats, rodents, rattlesnakes, mold, skateboards, water beetles, erosion processes, sinkholes, drainage patterns and ceiling tiles than I ever wanted to know,” Maloney wrote in her letter last May to parents announcing her switch after six years at the helm of Top of the World Elementary School.

Now, seated in her classroom before cardboard robots created by her students, Maloney can serenely say, “This is the best decision I ever made.”

Laguna Beach was able to steal a respected principal from a neighboring district to fill Maloney’s spot, but still has not found a principal for its other elementary school, El Morro, after its principal resigned in October.

Educators summed up the reasons for the principal shortage in a survey nationwide last year by the nonprofit Education Research Service: The job makes heavy time demands with 60- to 80-hour weeks, while the pay--generally $63,000 to $75,000 a year--is mediocre compared with that of corporate managers with comparable duties.

Some teachers are reluctant to lose union representation when they move into administrative jobs, and in California, a constant blizzard of legislative mandates means that schools are continually changing direction.

Most recently, in the wake of the Colorado school shooting, a number of principals have been forced to worry more about bomb threats and whether to allow black trench coats in class than about leading youngsters to intellectual excellence.

Carolyn Houston, principal at South Junior High School in Anaheim, said she always worried about school safety, but her concern intensified to trepidation after two of her students were arrested on suspicion of making bombs and possessing ammunition only days after the Littleton massacre.

“I don’t think I ever thought about anyone bringing guns on campus and shooting kids before that,” she said.

Teachers work an average of 45 hours weekly, while principals put in 60 hours or more, according to research by Richard P. McAdams, a professor at Lehigh University.

With new principals sometimes earning as little as $6,000 more a year than top teachers, all that added work adds up to about $10 per extra hour.

“Frankly, I have two children and I really needed to make more money for my family,” said former Mission Viejo Assistant Principal Doug Reznicek.

Reznicek left education two years ago to become a real estate agent.

Also contributing to the shortage are principals like Maloney who leave the administrative fray to return to the classroom. No educational clearinghouse keeps statistics on the trend, but it is a frequent topic of discussion in education circles.

Bob Quesada, a principal for 21 years in Cerritos, also decided last year he had had enough. Staff divisions and dissent, media scrutiny and jabs from parents had sapped the joy from both the job and his personal life.

He especially remembers the time he suspended a sixth-grader for a school prank, and ended up being ridiculed for it on a morning radio talk show.

“My family finally sat me down and told me that I wasn’t the same person anymore and they wanted me back,” he said.

Quesada took a $15,000 pay cut and now happily teaches sixth grade.

After 13 years as a principal in Inglewood Unified School District, Michael Adelman at Hudnall Elementary School also is stepping down. He finds that the expectations for the job have gotten out of control.

“If a fifth-grader comes in reading at first-grade level and we get him to second by the end of the year, we’ve done our job,” he said. But that’s seldom viewed as success by the public.

“Many of the kids here have language problems and are in low-performance schools,” said Adelman’s boss, Supt. McKinley Nash. “But people want the principals to produce as if these problems don’t exist, and so they’re catching it from all sides.”

The Double-Edged Sword of Reform

In California, principals complain bitterly about the helter-skelter nature of education reform.

Over the last two-year legislative session, the Assn. of California School Administrators tracked 700 education bills, 176 of which became law.

This session, legislative wheels have spun almost twice as fast; the association already is tracking 650 education bills just this year.

The new laws both make major policy changes, such as requiring smaller classroom sizes, and regulate the minutiae of everyday school life. They determine the process for student suspensions, require parental inspection of textbooks and allot the number of staff development days permissible at schools.

Most administrators don’t object to reform; there is consensus in academic circles that California schools must improve. In fact, there is wide support for many recent reforms, including ending bilingual education and social promotion and emphasizing phonics.

But it all adds up, principals say, to more responsibility and more accountability with less authority.

Many Los Angeles Unified School District elementary principals voiced such sentiments at an April meeting--though most were too afraid of repercussions to speak on the record.

“It’s just not worth it,” one principal of 12 years said. “I was in a meeting last week where I told my staff that I’ll probably retire at the end of the year. I reassured them that it wasn’t because of them or because of the parents or because of the kids.”

In particular, she cited the acrimonious politics of L.A. Unified and staffing shortfalls that leave her to do the job of two or three people.

The move from classroom to management also means loss of job security. Unlike teachers, principals generally have no tenure and no union.

In-House Training

Some districts already are responding to the lack of educational managers with programs of their own.

To develop its own pool of applicants, Capistrano Unified this year began a training academy for administrators.

“The job of these principals is so tough and so demanding,” said Capistrano Supt. James Fleming, “we decided to address it through a grow-your-own program.”

For several years the district has assigned promising teachers some administrative duties, terming them “teaching assistant principals.” They are given information about state initiatives, and guidance about the nuances of school leadership.

The Fresno schools have started a similar program. And in February, the Orange County Department of Education joined the California School Leadership Academy and the administrators’ association to form a partnership to attract and train potential principals.

Inglewood’s Nash said he has used exhaustive recruiting to come up with some excellent new principals.

“We have some dynamite [candidates]; both have earned their doctorates,” he said. “They’re outstanding young secondary teachers we got to go into administration. But I don’t even want to talk about it. If [other districts] knew where they were, they’d come get them now.”

The Irvine schools replaced five of their 31 principals over the last year, Supt. Patricia Clark White said. Although the district did receive a number of applications, White said, many were not from experienced, high-quality candidates. The number of openings was high for a district known for its academic achievement, but such hiring will become a more common exercise as more principals approach retirement.

The population of principals is graying. More than 80% of California’s 7,800 principals are older than 45, a state Department of Education survey found. Principals become eligible for retirement at 55. Coupled with the state’s looming population increase and educational reforms shrinking class sizes, the state will need hundreds of new principals in the next 10 years, officials said.

Of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 1,900 principals and assistant principals, 207 are older than 60. The mean age at which administrators historically have retired is 61, according to personnel records.

Fully 40% of the nation’s 93,200 principals are nearing retirement age, according to the National Library of Education. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that retirement alone will boost the number of openings for school administrators by up to 20% within the next six years.

It is time, educators say, to make the job more desirable.

Principals should be allowed to focus on curriculum and teaching, said Diane Yerkes, a professor of education administration at Cal State Fresno who has researched the topic. Others, she said, should shoulder extraneous tasks.

Paul Houston, executive director of the American Assn. of School Administrators, delicately likens the current relationship between principals and society to that of fire hydrants and dogs.

“The intended role and purpose of the fire hydrant is noble,” he said, “but its daily usage is something else entirely.”