Lila loved working in the shadows. She watched with humor as the teachers walked around the school like kings and queens with their court of students following in their wakes. And Lila watched with even greater humor as droves of parents, students, and teachers swarmed the school leader, all seeking the leader’s favor. Little did they know that Lila was the one who held the keys to so many of their interests, concerns, and problems. Oh, but then again, they knew. All of them knew that when they really needed to get something done, they could rely on Lila who needed no court, no droves, no swarm, and no fanfare.
Essential
Schools place teachers as stars on stage. And schools elevate school leaders above teachers as their dramatic symphony director. But schools operate on the quiet gifts and talents, exquisite insights, and committed labors of their administrators. School administrators are the glue that brings and binds it all together. You know how your whole elementary school revolved around the front-desk receptionist, who was so quick with a bandaid for a student’s bruise, shoulder for a student’s tears, hug for a teacher mourning a departed pet, phone number for the school plumber, and call for a substitute teacher? Those are the unsung but essential roles that school administrators play to keep a school running. That technology director teachers call when the classroom computer freezes, maintenance director the principal calls when the boiler quits, finance director the receptionist calls when a contractor needs a check, and department director battling colleagues call when both need the same classroom? Those administrators make schools work.
Academics
School administrators ensure the continuous and efficient operation of several essential functions. Those functions begin with the academic program. Academic administrators need to create course schedules every term that allow for faculty coverage and classroom or lab availability, while fulfilling curriculum requirements. Administrators need to communicate faculty assignments and deal with instructor illnesses and leaves, and alternative assignments or substitutes. Administrators may also need to schedule exams and proctors, review and approve faculty grades, and support student grade appeals. Administrators may also need to review and approve requests for disability accommodations and services, and arrange for those services. Administrators may also need to ensure student satisfactory academic progress, warn students of failure to progress, and implement probation and remedial measures. To accomplish these and other academic functions, schools employ administrators with titles like dean, provost, registrar, associate dean, assistant dean, department chair, and student services director.
Operations
Schools, though, have several other functions beyond those directly involving the academic program. Schools maintain student marketing and recruiting functions, admissions offices, enrollment and student services offices, financial aid offices, a budget and finance function, alumni and donor relations offices, library services, bookstores, technology departments, facility maintenance and custodial services functions, and campus safety and security functions. Residential schools may also have student housing, cafeteria, health services, recreation, and transportation departments. Larger schools and districts may also maintain central administrative offices for governance, legal, compliance, communications, purchasing, and other central services. Schools may employ administrators with titles like vice-president, associate dean, director, associate director, and administrator to lead operations functions.
Intermediaries
School administrators occupy an intermediate position between the school’s board and executive leader and the staff members who carry out day-to-day school functions. A vice-president of finance, for instance, would take the president’s directions on the budget, approved by the school board, and employ bookkeepers, accountants, clerks, and others to carry out the finance function. A director of student services, for another instance, would take the president’s direction on student services, and employ recruiters, admissions personnel, orientation teams, enrollment staff, student advisors, accommodations officers, special-needs staff, and other personnel to ensure students receive the needed and promised services. A facilities administrator, for another example, would employ repair services and custodial personnel. School administrators may provide substantial direct service but often instead direct contractors or staff members in the details of operational tasks.
Skills
The skills of a school administrator are managerial more so than creative, productive, or relational. School administrators may at times be quite creative, must generally be productive, and need to build and maintain good relationships. But those qualities are bonuses, not essentials. School administrators are not necessarily known for their great personalities and strong people skills, nor for their creative genius. They are instead the knowledgeable, reliable, sensible, and practical types. They must know what is doable and what is not. They must know what is affordable and what is not. They must know what will serve and last, and what will not. Their backgrounds may be broad and varied, giving them a realistic view of things. Or their backgrounds may be specific to their functions, such as a technology director having come up through the ranks as a tech specialist or a finance administrator having started in bookkeeping, payroll, and accounting. But above all, they know how to keep things running and make things work.
Timeliness
School administrators must also be timely in their work. Schools depend on schedules. Terms must start and end on specific dates. Buildings must open and close at specific times. Classrooms must be clean, open, and orderly for specific classes at specific hours on specific days. Exams must be ready for distribution and administration at precise times. Course catalogs must publish by certain dates, and registration must open and close on certain dates. Administrators must complete every behind-the-scenes task in proper order with correct detail to meet those schedules. A delay here causes a delay there. An error here works its way through the system to produce errors there. Thus, administrators must not only be timely in their work but also rigorous in meeting work standards.
Integration
Schools not only operate on strict schedules. They also require the smooth integration of multiple functions at once, to serve large numbers of institutional users including students, faculty, staff, administrators, and guests. Communications, technology, facilities, maintenance, repair, custodial, security, safety, grounds, transportation, utilities, purchasing, food services, library services, and contract services must all support the academic personnel and the students whom they guide and instruct at just the right time and in just the right place. A campus that includes residential, recreational, food, medical, transportation, and security services operates more like a small city than a school, and not just business hours on weekdays but round the clock and straight through the weekend, especially if the school offers evening and weekend classes, services, or events, as many schools do. School administrators thus need to be total team players, ready, willing, and able to problem solve with other administrators across functions on a moment’s notice.
Efficiency
School administrators also need to be efficient both in their own use of time and resources, and in the way that they allocate the school’s resources to administer their functions. Top-heavy administration is the bane of school budgets. The most financially efficient school would have every employee teaching students to generate tuition or per-pupil funding revenue, and no non-instructional personnel. But full-time teachers don’t generally have the time, skill, or inclination to complete substantial administrative tasks like those described above. If the computers fail, an instructor isn’t going to have the skills or time to fix them. If a contractor doesn’t show up to fix the elevator or lights, an instructor isn’t going to have the time or contacts to call another contractor. Schools need administrators. Administrators just don’t, for the most part, generate revenue. Their cost is overhead cost, not revenue-generating investment. Schools thus often call on administrators to take on more and more administrative tasks, especially in times of severe budget constraints, taxing their abilities to perform.
Management
When school leaders receive their appointment, they generally inherit a school administrative team. The school leader may have risen through the ranks of school administrators, having previously served the school as an assistant superintendent, assistant principal, provost, dean, associate dean, or in a similar administrative role serving the prior school leader. If so, the school leader may already be intimately familiar with the school’s administrative team and on good terms with all its members. School leaders may, though, be in a position to recruit, retain, orient, and supervise their own administrative team members, either over time as the team evolves or upon the leader’s initial hiring, in an administrative reorganization. In any case, the school leader is generally the direct or indirect supervisor of all school administrative team members. Administrative reporting is to the school leader. To manage the administrative team effectively, the school leader may gather the team for regular meetings, at least monthly if not more often, to enable all administrators to share and discuss successes, opportunities, challenges, problems, and concerns.
Rewards
School administrators generally get little recognition. Students reserve their applause for their favorite teachers or professors. Board members and faculties applaud their school president, dean, principal, or other leader. School administrators by contrast work in relative obscurity. The school leader is generally the one member of the school community who most appreciates a skilled school administrator. The school leader’s reliance, and the job security, compensation, and benefits that go along with it, are the rewards that skilled school administrators receive. School leaders can be very loyal to their key administrators, a trust, confidence, and respect that school administrators earn with their tireless, effective, and seemingly irreplaceable devotion to their often-thankless tasks. Schools need to provide adequate compensation and benefits for key school administrators, or school operations may suffer from frequent turnover in key positions where institutional knowledge is at a premium.
Reflection
On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the effectiveness of your school’s administration? Can you identify your school’s key administrative leaders and their functions, or do they work entirely in the shadows? Does your school have an operations function that lacks skilled administration? If so, how does that lack show up in the function’s execution, and how does it adversely impact the school? Does your school’s administration complete all critical administrative tasks timely, or do you instead see disruptive delays due to untimely administrative work? Do your school’s administrators work well as a team, integrating their operational functions? Is your school top heavy with administrators, unduly lean in administration, or about right?
Key Points
Skilled administrators are essential to keep a school running.
Administrators direct critical academic and non-academic functions.
Administrators are intermediaries between the executive and staff.
Administrators need strong managerial and systems skills.
Administrators must work timely to meet strict school schedules.
Administrators must integrate their function with other functions.
Schools need efficient administrators to keep overhead costs low.
School leaders manage the administrative team in regular meetings.
Administrator rewards are primarily in leader reliance and loyalty.