CSA Cites Study Finding Exodus Of Principals

CSA Cites Study Finding Exodus Of Principals


The leader of the union representing Principals said last week that a new study predicting massive retirements and increased burdens for school leaders confirms what she's asserted for years.

According to the Northeast Regional Elementary School Principals' Council, 42 percent of the Principals in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont plan to retire within five years. The results mirror those in a University of Albany study last year which said 43 percent of New York Principals plan to leave by 2010.

'No Child' Cited

The new study also notes that 65 percent of school leaders have added between five and 15 hours of work weekly due to the No Child Left Behind Act, and 50 percent are the lone supervisor of more than 50 students.

"I've been saying this for 14 years, and now the statistics caught up with us in the Northeast region," Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Jill S. Levy said in an Oct. 31 interview. "This just validates all the anecdotal evidence."

She said her union had sought to alleviate the massive supervisory responsibilities of many of her members, including a proposal to the city as part of CSA's contract talks, which she said had not been well-received. She has also lobbied the City Council to convene hearings on the matter, and more specifically on how pattern bargaining fails her members.

"We know that the amount of time that our members spend [at work] is so far beyond other city workers [that] the way we bargain is really so ridiculous," Ms. Levy said. "It just doesn't meet the distinctive needs of the employees."

A spokesman for the Department of Education said in an e-mail, "The DOE and Leadership Academy have not seen or reviewed the report yet. We have a system for projecting needs at the DOE each year and will be reviewing data shortly to project future needs as we do every fall. Until we have completed our projections for '07-'08 and until we have read this report, we cannot comment on its contents."

For Ms. Levy, however, the answer to attracting qualified replacements for those who will depart is simple. Pointing out that her members have worked under an expired contract since July 1, 2003, and that her union recently filed for factfinding with the Public Employment Relations Board in an effort to resolve the stalemate, she suggested that DOE could catch more flies with honey.

"We do think if you make the working conditions better, less punitive and with more support, the number of candidates you would like to choose from would increase," she said.