Who is best positioned to implement districtwide strategic plans? It’s a question central office leaders grapple with as a plan is rolled out across many school sites — and staff members — within a district. But there’s one role that serves as a critical link between the central office and school leaders to ensure that the work of a strategic plan can reach classrooms and students with fidelity: principal supervisors.
The everyday support and coach for school-based principals in a district, principal supervisors’ singular focus is to build the capacity of their principals to achieve a set of outcomes with school-based teams. In the aggregate, this capacity-building can drive districtwide results in alignment with a multiyear strategic plan. Through coaching and supporting principals to develop their school-specific plans, principal supervisors have a unique window into broader district strategic plan priorities in the short and long term, and a dual feedback loop with central office decision-makers and school-based leaders.
As central office leadership forms its inclusive strategic plan, with buy-in from school and community members, and invests in a transparent and structured implementation process, it does so with all students’ and schools’ best interests in mind. But conditions and cultures at individual school sites within the same district vary. By including principal supervisors in the implementation process and in decision-making, a superintendent’s team can leverage these supervisors’ role and rapport with principals and school-based leadership teams to ensure that a strategic plan’s key goals are widely implemented. Principal supervisors act as a strategic plan champion, or “ambassador,” by translating key central office decisions directly to principals and their leadership teams on the ground in schools, tying districtwide initiatives directly to a given school’s community. Principal supervisors also generate feedback from school-based leadership and translate observed patterns back to the central office before they become intractable trends within a district.
Ensuring principal supervisors can effectively serve as ambassadors for a district’s strategic plan requires three key investment opportunities from central office leadership.
Opportunity No. 1: Enable principal supervisors to spend a majority of their time in schools. How these supervisory roles are structured is just as important as how they engage with principals and school-based leadership on a daily basis. Principal supervisors should spend most of their time in the field — at school sites, in meetings and coaching sessions with principals providing routine feedback — to develop relationships and awareness of school performance that district leaders need. Are principal supervisors’ roles structured to balance an awareness of district priorities with an innate knowledge of a given school’s culture, community, and team? This question can only be addressed when a principal supervisor spends dedicated time in schools and with the school-based principals they oversee.
Opportunity No. 2: Provide ongoing coaching for principal supervisor teams. It’s critical for central office leadership to provide meaningful professional development and support to principal supervisors focused on building their capacity as leaders, coaches, and strategists. This level of support must include helping principal supervisors build plans for their networks of principals and schools that translate districtwide strategic plan goals and priorities into school-specific goals and implementation plans.
Just as a district strategic plan builds on a shared understanding of the current state, school-specific plans should also build on disaggregated qualitative and quantitative school-specific data aligned with leading and lagging indicators. Ongoing support and coaching can also ensure that all principal supervisors in a district are grounded in a set of shared practices, strategies, and processes that align with and scaffold up to a strategic plan’s goals. In a facilitated professional learning community, principal supervisors have the opportunity to share what works, dissect problems of practice, and learn together.
Opportunity No. 3: Create a sustained feedback loop between principal supervisors and central office leadership grounded in trust and a shared vision for student success. It’s vital that principal supervisors have the ear of central office decision-makers and can inform implementation of the strategic plan based on how it’s being rolled out on a daily basis at the most important levels — in schools and classrooms, among individual teachers and their students. With their “ear to the ground” in school buildings, principal supervisors can monitor and give feedback in a grain size that provides central office leadership with a pulse check on emerging issues. Ideally, this level of ongoing feedback is incorporated as part of broader efforts related to strategic plan performance management and continuous improvement.
Every district and school-based leader wants what’s best for students and strives to create and implement a strategic plan to achieve that end. But competing priorities can inadvertently thwart even the best of intentions.
By leveraging the unique perspective and vantage point of principal supervisors, central office leadership can develop a better sense of what’s working in strategic plan implementation, and where principals and teachers are experiencing wins and challenges in implementing districtwide priorities in real time. As on-the-ground central office ambassadors for a district’s strategic plan, investing in principal supervisors can drive outcomes and goals that lead to lasting impact for students.