The Challenges of Leading Two Schools 

As a member of the Principal Concerns Committee I have been asked to provide perspective on the challenges of leading two schools at one time. For the past five years I served as principal of Park Community Charter School and Victor Haen Elementary School in the Kaukauna Area School District.

Leading any school is a challenge for principals to do well in today’s world. Parent meetings, staffing issues, teacher effectiveness evaluations, assessments and curriculum development are more than enough to keep any administrator busy. Add another school of any size and everything doubles.  This is a challenge that I did my best to meet but often felt that neither school was getting my best work. 

It would have been difficult to lead if both schools were the same but in our district both schools are very different.

• Behavior Program - One school does PBIS while the other does Conscious Discipline so each time I dealt with a kid I needed to recheck my language and adjust my responses accordingly.  Haen has a poverty rate of about 50% and many at risk students. Behavior issues were more common and parent related issues tended to pop up at very unexpected times.  When they did pop I was usually at my charter school resulting in a trip to Haen to address the concern. Though I tried to divide my time equally I never seemed to be in the right place when something came up and it usually pulled away from the kids at Park Community.
• One of the strategies to help with discipline was to have a lead teacher in each building to help when I was not there. While this did help some it also created confusion and disconnect for staff and students. Many times my lead teacher would address an issue or staff would go directly to them and I did not find out about the issue until after the event. In many cases the lead teacher knew the kids that needed help better than I did.

• Building Structure - Haen is a 1-4 elementary building with a high poverty rate. We were in the process of writing a Title 1 School Wide grant which was accepted during my last year.  The process took a lot of time to write and prepare with staff how this additional support would look in the building. Park Community is a K-4 charter school with monthly board meetings, separate charter budget and control over technology and curriculum decisions.  There are also several large community events that take a significant amount of planning time.
• Curriculum - Thankfully both schools use Math Expressions and both schools use the Partners in Comprehensive Literacy model. However my charter school has a strong science and social studies connection. We have been leading the way in our district integrating next generation science standards into our literacy instruction and connecting these lessons to hand on field studies to our community partners (Kaukauna Utilities, 1000 Islands Environmental Center and the Historic Grignon Mansion). There has been a lot of PD provided to staff in both areas and each time I had to try to spend equal time on in-service days. Ultimately both staffs ended up getting half of what other buildings received from full time principals.