security is by definition an advocate for school safety and the needs of the
many taking priority over the needs of the one. It is easy to see why these
too could be at loggerheads. Chapter 3 provides a description of how a
supervisory staff meeting was used to resolve issues among these depart-
ment heads to reach consensus.
Filling key positions in a school is another aspect of getting one’s ducks
in a row. Every school has certain staff members with the skill and expertise
to perform functions that keep the school operating. These may include the
deans, who maintain order in the school; the programmers, who make sure
all students are in their proper classes; a coordinator of student activities,
who serves as a liaison with the student council and plans events for stu-
dents, such as dances, charitable fund drives, school trips, and graduation; a
coordinator of attendance, who follows up on students absent from school;
a technology coordinator, who maintains and upgrades computers and
peripherals; a director of admissions, who recruits students and then eases
them and their parents in the transition to a new school (this latter is most
frequently found in specialty or magnate type schools).
Newly assigned principals usually find that these staff members, the
underlying bureaucracy of any school, do their jobs well. Not yet being
fully aware of the realities of life, they may assume they will continue in
these jobs as long as they are principals. The first time someone requests
to go back to the classroom full-time or announces a retirement, they may
be taken by surprise—and then have to scramble to find a replacement. Of
course, this replacement while well meaning and talented will need time
to learn what the veteran knew, and as a result, the school will run less
efficiently in this area for some time.
After this happened to Principal Niles-Perry in her Los Angeles grade
7–12 school, she began to line up her replacement “ducks” and looked
for ways to provide them pretraining. Her work with her program office
provides an example.
Almost from the beginning, the program office did more than program.
During the crunch times of August, September, December, January, and
June (her school reorganized each semester), the two programmers were
fully engaged with the correct programming of students, classes, and
teachers. In between, they met with Ms. Niles-Perry and the assistant prin-
cipals, made projections and preliminary plans, and also provided various
staff members with data reports available through the district’s computer
116 Chapter 8