Dive Brief:
- Lisa Gonzales and Irella Perez, two Latina superintendents from California, have struggled against biased board members and the pressure to be twice as good, as women, to be taken seriously.
- EdSurge reports Perez advises new superintendents to research the history of the city and school district as well as the board of education to determine the biases and prejudices they might have to confront, and Gonzales recommends finding trusted insiders to vet ideas with and navigate complicated histories.
- While both women see it as a superintendent’s job to lead a district’s technology vision, Perez said it is sometimes harder to get those plans accepted as a woman, requiring a much more extensive rationale than a man would be asked to provide.
Dive Insight:
Gender politics continue to play out in schools across the country with superintendents far more likely to be men even though the teaching force is dominated by women. In a study by The School Superintendents Association, the vast majority of female superintendents thought school board members did not see them as strong managers or as capable of handling district finances. The majority of school board members have been men for decades. And perhaps because of this, nearly half of male superintendents agreed that school boards tended to view women as incapable of managing a district.
Two strategies University of Memphis professor Tom Glass recommends are changing the superintendent’s role to be more attractive to women, on the one hand, by spreading out the superintendent duties across central office leaders to limit the overwhelming workload, and on the other, by giving superintendents more time to be in the field.