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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

I used to agree with this mentality, but I've seen first-hand how important a really good principal can be. Over the past three years my kids elementary school has turned around the direction of test scores, teacher attrition, and the overall mood and enthusiasm of the whole school staff.

One great example from last year was when the school was facing budget cuts after a bond failed. Rather than cut any teachers or staff, she was able get a massive PTO fundraising effort to bring in tens of thousands from the local community. She also worked with local businesses to donate thousands of dollars worth of paper, office and maintenance supplies, and even food for some of the fundraising events.

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I was being flippant in my answer, but there's a nugget of truth to it -- growing up, my school district had maybe 50-60 administrators to run about 25 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, and 8 or so high schools. Each of which had a principal, assistant principal, librarian, etc.

But today, that number is much higher. Mainly because of increased reporting requirements (No Child Left Behind, etc). But also to do things like write grant proposals (the federal Department of Education hadn't been created in my time, and wasn't handing out money)

I'm just a layman, but I wonder if that sort of ability from a n administrator is exactly the sort of thing that would be less likely to happen with larger and larger administrative staffs?

If you're swamped by your administrative duties, you're unlikely to find the time + energy for the kind of initiatives described here.

Getting rid of the "overhead" is a cop-out. With fewer (administrative) people, you're going to get less administration done - people aren't going to magically do more work. If you can pinpoint those tasks that are relatively unnecessary, you're got a real contribution to make. However, that's often surprisingly tricky, which is why in all kinds of cost-cutting debates people pretend theres this "overhead" that's nicely pre-categorized and ready to cut.

If only it really were that simple.

Not necessarily. To some extent the administrator for an even larger school district/unit is there because of their excellent bullshitting skills.

The laughable part is that the goals that the administration pursues are, at best, tangential to the goals that everyone else has for school systems.

They want their children to have an adequate education... but the principal made sure no one was laid off, and that morale was good among the employees.

I agree with both of you. Fire some administrators... but not the good principals. :) There appears to be some room for improvement at a level higher than school principal.

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