A committee of faculty, community residents and possibly students will help chart the direction Oak Park and River Forest High School will take in choosing its next superintendent/principal, the school board announced last Thursday.
Current Superintendent/Principal Susan Bridge announced earlier this year that she would step down in 2007 after seven years in the position. The board will soon be faced with the decision of keeping the position as is or splitting them apart.
“We need to determine what the structure is going to be post-Dr. Bridge,” said Board President John Rigas. “My point here is to discuss how we can begin that process.”
The board will decide the fate of the dual position. Board members and sitting administrative team at OPRF weighed in on the issue at the Sept. 22, school board meeting at the school, 201 N. Scoville Ave.
All agreed in seeking input from the various stakeholders, in particular faculty, alumni, students and parents. Members also agreed to involve the larger Oak Park community. Gauging public discourse through the committee is expected to be a thorough and lengthy process. Members agreed that the process should begin tentatively by spring 2006.
“The people who do become a part of this committee or task force or whatever we call it; they need to feel comfortable that they can truly be honest and open,” said board member Dee Millard. “We want people’s honest opinion, and we don’t want anybody to feel that they can’t be forthcoming.”
The board will meet in the next couple of weeks to further discuss the nature of the committee, said Rigas.
Several issues in particular need to be hammered out, he noted, namely establishing a timeline for how long the process should take and coordinating times for the board to meet with stakeholders. When and how those stakeholders will be chosen for the committee will be discussed later. Members agreed that the process should begin tentatively by spring 2006.
Defining the roles, seeking input
At the meeting last week, the board did not discuss whether it should split the positions. Rigas instead asked each board member how they should proceed. Members seemed unanimous that regardless of the fate of the position/s both needed to be clearly defined.
“I know we have a superintendent/principal, but I’m not sure that I always understand the difference,” said board member Barry Greenwald. “I understand that when there are districts with 10 schools there’s one person sitting on top of the administration pyramid. But when you have a single building in one district, it seems that the jobs would merge, and that might not necessarily be the case here.”
According to research by the Illinois Consortium for Education Leadership, a planning and policy committee of statewide educators, over 90 individuals served as both superintendent and principal in Illinois schools as of 2001. One reportedly served as both in two school districts.
OPRF was among the largest districts with the dual position, with nearly 3,000 students and more than 160 teachers in District 200.
The consortium considers the principal “the instructional leader of their schools and the primary person charged with establishing a culture of learning within their schools…”
The question for OPRF, the school board and proposed committee is how will the position/s best serve such goals.
“People see the principal and the superintendent as one in the same and they’re really not,” said Bridge, who was a principal in the Glenbard Township school district prior to joining OPRF. “If they spilt the position, people will still come to this office for matters concerning the high school where the superintendent is responsible for the entire district.”
The jobs, though, continue to cross at OPRF, according to Bridge. She advised the board that if the roles are spilt, the superintendent should be in place first and that he/she should have an active role in choosing the next principal.
Others, however, maintain that the school and community need to be educated on the responsibilities of both.
“The students and teachers need to know what [Dr. Bridge] does on a daily basis, and how that would or would not divide up,” said Jack Lanenga, assistant superintendent for operations. “A redefinition of the roles regardless of whether we change the top is a good idea.”
CONTACT: tdean@wjinc.com