Posted on: Tuesday, March 30, 2004

ISLAND VOICES
Come on in, the water's fine

By Daniel E. White
The founding head of school of Island Pacific Academy

Swimming in the ocean recently, I composed an invitation to my partners in leadership, Hawai'i's public school principals. Come on in. The water is fine. The exercise is good for the heart.

Seize the opportunity to have both the authority and the responsibility to run your school, in collaboration with your teachers, staff and constituencies that matter to your school. I interpret the position taken by your union opposing decentralization as an understandable expression of anxiety about what it is like to be the "here" as in "the buck stops here."

Take it from a 17-year veteran of independent school headship: Having the authority to go along with the responsibility everybody ascribes to you anyway is the only way to be an effective leader. Your job as a principal is hard; so has mine been as a headmaster. But I have had complete authority, working for boards that govern without micromanaging, to allocate the financial, physical and human resources in the manner I, working in collaboration with the teachers, see fit.

My success has depended upon building and sustaining trust relationships with faculty, staff, parents, alumni, neighbors, trustees and, yes, the students as well. You do that, too. Often these relationships produce unexpected dividends in the form of donated time, talent and money.

Professor William Ouchi proposes that you become educational entrepreneurs. As a headmaster, I've had to be one. Private schools are market-driven: If we don't do what we say we are going to do, or if our mission is something people don't want, we're done for. So we set our missions, recruit students who are mission-appropriate and families who buy into the mission. We listen, to assure ourselves that there is a market for our mission.

We compete for good teachers and reward those teachers with the authority and responsibility to serve their students' individual needs to the best of their ability.

We fund-raise, because the cost of educating a child at an independent school is often significantly higher than the tuition charged. Gifts and grants help us extend access to our schools to families who cannot afford the full cost of tuition, and foundation support often helps us innovate, support professional development or replace aging facilities.

We manage our boards of trustees without leaving fingerprints, providing these super-volunteers with the information and training they need to provide effective governance. Uniquely, we are the one employee hired by the board yet bear much responsibility for how well that board functions.

What more does an entrepreneur do but find good ideas, marshal necessary resources, hire and manage capable people and assess the market? That's a good definition of leadership, too. Principals, aren't you doing most of this already?

There are differences between public and private schools, though at the collegiate level it seldom matters that, say, Stanford is private and Berkeley public; that status is not what defines them. Public and private are part of a system of education that provides choice to families and focuses on what is best for individual children. As the conversation about education proceeds this legislative session, public and private have the opportunity to help and learn from each other. Whether there is one board, seven boards, 15 boards or 260 boards, the end result ought to give you the authority to run your school.

As a swimmer, I know about box jellyfish. After a shark attack, I hear the "Jaws" theme and am certain I am being stalked. Principals and headmasters know that there are jellyfish and sharks in our work worlds. In spite of the hazards, imaginary and real, I am jumping into the waters of school leadership again because I know that I have the authority, as well as the responsibility, to help fashion something good for students. Come on in.