University of Minnesota-Duluth Department of Education Duluth, MN The Superintendency EDAD 5919 3 Credits Fall 2012 Instructor: Charles Rick,

Ed.D. Telephone: 218-780-0343 Email: corick@d.umn.edu Course Dates and Hours: September 15 (8:00-12:30), October 27 (1:00-4:30), and December 1 (1:00-4:30), plus additional online course hours, 3 credits for a total of 3 contact hours. Course Description: Learners will examine the level of decision making that differentiates district administration and identify the categories of responsibility unique to the superintendent, including: practice in creating district level mission, vision and strategic planning, contract negotiations, procedures for working with state and federal agencies, coalition building, program coordination, school board relations, and clear establishment of expectations. 2012 Fall EDAD 5919 Weekly Topics September 15 1st Class Session Sept. 24-28 Oct. 1-5 Oct 8-12 Oct. 15-19 Oct. 22-26 The Superintendency Today The Superintendent Role in Student Achievement Planning and Accountability Peak Performing Leadership Teams Transition Planning and Entry Plan for New Superintendent

October 27 2nd Class Session Oct. 29-Nov. 2 Nov. 5-9 Nov. 12-16 Nov. 19-23 Charter Schools and School Choice

The New Superintendent and School Finance School District Governance by School Boards Superintendent and School Board Relationships

Thanksgiving on November 22-23 Nov. 26-30 Community Leadership

December 1 3rd Class Session Dec. 3-7 Dec. 10-14 Superintendent Contract and Evaluation Ethics and the Superintendent

Dec. 17-21 Final Exam Week Assessments Required Assignments (5 Reflection Papers) 1. Reflection Paper - Interview a sitting Superintendent on, what it means to be, Superintendent Today in the 21st Century. 2. Reflection Paper - Prepare a written report on your observations from a school board meeting either in your own district or another district? 3. Reflection Paper What is your vision for preparing our children to thrive in 21st century society? 4. Reflection Paper - How will you spend your first 90 days on the job? The President of the United States gets 100 days to prove himself (herself); you get 90. The actions you take during your first three months in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed at all. (Quote by Michael Watkins) 5. Prepare a written report on your discussion with the Superintendent on the following topics: District Budget Guiding questions: Where is the district headed? Ask questions about the organization mission, vision, goals, and strategic plan. Review the district budget. Be sure you understand the sources of revenue, categories of expenditure, types of funds, and fund balances. What is the financial health of the district? Describe the strengths of the district financial plan? Areas for improvement? How much is enough in a fund balance? How do you build and protect a fund balance? Where do you account for unreserved fund balance? Review current or anticipated budget challenges. What is the financial status of the district according to the most recent school district audit? Presentation on Proposing an Operating Levy OR Developing a District Strategic Plan Choose either trying to pass an operating levy OR working with a population to develop a strategic plan. Give a full scale power point presentation to explain to your school board what each is, where you are in the process, and what your advice is to go from there to a continuous improvement model of a strategic plan if you choose that OR the timeline of activities and strategies you would use for an operating levy. Use any and all resources you can...individual interviews with superintendents in the area, web searches, contact with MSBA, and work with MASSP. Do not be afraid to ask different sources that you may not have approached before to begin expanding your network of contacts.

Competencies: This course is designed to enable students to demonstrate competency in the following Core Leadership Competencies: A4: Demonstrating an understanding of issues affecting education; A5: Through a visioning process, formulating strategic plans and goals with staff and community; A7: Serving as a spokesperson for the welfare of all learners in a multicultural context; A9: Demonstrating the ability to facilitate and motivate others; B5: Developing and managing budgets and maintain accurate fiscal records; B6: Demonstrating an understanding of facilities development, planning, and management; C2: Creating and monitoring a positive learning environment for all students; D2: Recognizing and applying standards of care involving civil and criminal liability for negligence, harassment, and intentional torts; D3: Demonstrating an understanding of state, federal, and case law governing general education, special education, and community education; E1: Exhibiting an understanding of school districts as a political system, including governance models; E3: Understanding the role and coordination of social agencies and human services; E4: Demonstrating the ability to align constituencies in support of priorities and for programmatic and financial support; F1: Formulating and carrying out plans for internal and external communications; F3: Recognizing and applying an understanding of individual and group behavior in normal and stressful situations; F7: Responding, reviewing and summarizing information for groups; F8: Communicating appropriately speaking, listening, and writing for different audiences such as students, teachers, parents, community, and other stakeholders; G3: Demonstrating the ability to build community consensus; G4: Relating political initiatives to stakeholders including parental involvement programs; G5: Identifying and interacting with internal and external publics; G6: Understanding and responding to the news media; G7: Promoting a positive image of schools and the school district; G8: Monitoring and addressing perception about school-community issues; G9: Demonstrating the ability to identify and articulate critical community issues that may impact local education; J5: Demonstrating understanding of management responsibilities to act in accordance with federal and state constitutional provisions, statutory and case law, regulatory applications toward education, local rules, procedures, and directives governing human resource management; J6: Demonstrating understanding of labor relations and collective bargaining; K2: Demonstrating understanding of and model democratic value systems, ethics, and moral leadership; L3: Assisting others in forming opinions about problems and issues;

L5: Identifying and giving priority to significant issues; L7: Demonstrating understanding of different leadership and decision-making strategies, including but not limited to collaborative models and model appropriately their implementation; M1 Demonstrating the ability to develop and implement policies and procedures for safe and secure educational environments. Superintendent Competencies A2: Demonstrating knowledge of statutory regulations affecting School Board meetings, communications, procedures, and practices; A3: Demonstrating an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the School Board; B3: Demonstrating understanding of the roles played by other community leaders in the school district; E1: Demonstrating knowledge of how to balance varied and competing interests to ensure the mission and vision of the school district is carried forward. Suggested Course Materials Hayes, W. (2001). So you want to be a superintendent. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield. Houston, P., Blanstein, A., & Cole, R. (2007). Out of the box leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kowalski, T. (2006). The school superintendent: Theory, practice, and cases. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kowalski, T., McCord, R., Peterson, G., & Young, P. (2011). The American school superintendent 2010 decennial study. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield. The course materials are available at online sellers such as Amazon.com, BigWords.com, and VarsityBooks.com. Additional materials, such as class notes and supplemental readings will be distributed in class and/or available for download at our class web site. Expectations Students in this course should possess a strong work ethic, a keen sense of intellectual curiosity, receptiveness to new ideas, a willingness to take risks and to work with others, and an interest in benefiting school children. Students in this course also are expected to have both e-mail and internet access. Much of our work and our communication will be done electronically. Since much of this class will be online, a broadband internet connection is highly recommended. Students in courses offered by the Department of Educational Policy and Administration are expected to exhibit graduate-level writing skills and to comply with the requirements of the APA Manual for all written work unless notified otherwise by the instructor. For further information, please consult the following: American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Pages 397-410 of the APA Manual cover the basics of legal citation within the APA framework. Your written and oral communication always should be professional in style, appearance, and content. Avoid improprieties that detract from the message that you wish to send through your writing. Use good grammar, check your spelling, ensure that verbs match subjects, and avoid contractions and abbreviations. Use heading and subheadings to categorize and organize your writing and otherwise comply with the technical characteristics inherent to good writing (a good guideline is to approach every writing assignment as if you were submitting it to a school board or an organization from which you were requesting money). Please contact us if you need assistance meeting any of these expectations. Grading and Assessment Your grade in this course will be based on the following components, each of which is discussed further below: Reading, online participation and class discussion (50%) Reflective papers on selected topics (40%) Presentation on Proposing an Operating Levy OR Developing a District Strategic Plan (10%) In addition to assigning grades based on the components just listed, we reserve the right to adjust grades to the benefit of the students if the course grade distribution warrants such an adjustment. Our course will be divided into 12 learning units. These units will consist of varied combinations of readings, class participation, narrated presentations, online discussions, and other activities. We believe that our time together, whether in class or online, is very important. When we meet face-to-fact, please come to class on time, prepared to participate extensively. If an emergency arises that will prohibit your attendance, please contact Paula Forbes immediately so that we may discuss your situation. When were interacting online, please take that work seriously and be a good online contributor. By working together, we can greatly facilitate our own and others learning. Since our online discussion area is our primary place for interaction, you should plan to check in and participate regularly (i.e., every few days). It is OKAY to take a few days off for a family trip, vacation, etc. It is NOT OKAY to disappear for weeks at a time and then try and catch up in a mad rush at the end. The value of the course comes from the ongoing, interactive conversation with the material and others, not just satisfying posting requirements. Grading Policy This class will comply with the University of Minnesota Uniform Grading and transcript Policy, which is available at: http://tinyurl.com/hjnvw Grades for this class are defined as follows and include the use of pluses and minuses: A Achievement that is outstanding relative to the level necessary to meet course requirements; B Achievement that is significantly above the level necessary to meet course requirements;

C Achievement that meets the course requirements in every respect; D Achievement that is worthy of credit even though it fails to meet fully the course requirements; S Achievement that is satisfactory, which is equivalent to a C- or better (achievement required for an S is at the discretion of the instructor buy may be no lower than a C-); F (or N) Represents failure (or no credit) and signifies that the work was either (1) completed but at a level or achievement that is not worthy of credit or (2) Was not completed and there was o agreement between the instructor and the student that the student would be awarded an I (Incomplete). Note that academic dishonesty in any portion of the academic work for a course may be grounds for awarding a grade of F or N for the entire course; I Incomplete course grades may be assigned at the discretion of the instructor when, due to extraordinary circumstances (e.g., hospitalization), a student is prevented from completing the work of the course on time. Requires a written agreement between instructor and student. For undergraduate courses, one credit is defined as equivalent to an average of three hours of learning effort per week (over a full 15-week semester) necessary for an average student to achieve an average grade (i.e., a C) in the course. For example, a student taking a three-credit course that meets for three hours a week should expect to spend an additional six hours a week on coursework outside the classroom. Graduate students should expect to spend more time than undergraduate students on their coursework to receive an equivalent grade. You should expect to spend between 12 and 15 hours per week on class activities (reading, Power Point presentations, online discussions, etc.). Submitting and Returning Assignments All assignments will be submitted and returned via our course web site. Make-Up Policy Please contact us immediately if you will not be able to complete one or more assignments so that we can jointly devise a plan to help you successfully complete the course. Note that an incomplete requires a written agreement between the student and instructor(s). If you think you will need to take an Incomplete, please contact us immediately. Learning Needs and Accommodations If you are a student with special needs of some kind and you wish to make us aware of those needs, please let us know so that we can work together to address your needs. Helpful information also is available at the web site of the University of Minnesota Disability Services Office: http://ds.umn.edu Academic Misconduct Please understand that, as in the real world, your work always is expected to be your own and that honesty truly is the best policy. The official University of Minnesota student conduct policy (including the policy on scholastic dishonesty) is available at: http://www1.umn.edu/regents/policies/academic/Student_Conduct_Code.html Helpful information also is available at the web site of the University of Minnesota

Office for Student Academic Integrity: http://www1.umn.edu/oscai Harassment and Classroom Conduct Harassment of others, sexual or otherwise, will not be tolerated in any STLI courses. Sexual harassment by or toward a member of the university of Minnesota community is expressly prohibited by university policy. The official University of Minnesota sexual harassment policy is available at: http://www.umn.edu/usenate/scfa/sexualharassment.html See also the official University of Minnesota student conduct policy at: http://www1.umn.edu/regents/policies/academic/Student_Conduct_Code.html Diversity As the syllabus and course activities hopefully illustrate, this course is dedicated to honoring diversity and difference and is designed to foster critical thinking by students about accommodation of minority rights and viewpoints. Diversity issues include but are not limited to issues of age, creed, disability, ethnicity, family structure, gender, global perspectives, ideology, international background, language background, learning differences, marital status, multicultural perspectives, national origin, public assistance status, race religion, sex, sexual orientation, and/or veteran status.