While we're out shopping for a new superintendent...

I highly recommend this great article that ran a couple of months ago in the great EdSource.

It's about the high turnover of superintendents, and the reasons why. A couple of gems:

The “honeymoon” with the school board lasts between 12 and 18 months before “political interests and dysfunction show up” former school superintendent Santiago Wood said for the piece. A board may have hired a superintendent to institute reforms, but when interest groups such as unions or community organizations complain, the elected board gets uncomfortable, Wood said.

“Even if you agree on the results,” Becca Bracy Knight, executive director of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems in Los Angeles, “change is painful. It is so critical that superintendents have the backing of the governing board when they go down that road.”

The board and superintendents must agree not only on what changes they want to see, but also how quickly and what sacrifices they are prepared to make to get there, she said.