Sun Sentinel
Updated: 6:17 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010
Posted: 6:16 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010
Bill Fay has few equals among Palm Beach and Broward county public school principals when it comes to experience running a campus.
Fay, 70, is in his 32nd year as a school administrator, including the past 16 in charge of Banyan Creek Elementary in Delray Beach.
"I am on a path to be the first 100-year-old principal in Palm Beach County," he said recently. "That's how much I love what I do."
While Fay enjoys his longevity, it's harder these days to find seasoned veterans running schools. Including Fay, only nine of the county's 177 principals have 20 or more years of experience.
Experts say the main reasons are retirements, a greater number of schools creating openings and higher academic standards prompting some to leave.
With younger and less-experienced principals, should parents be concerned that schools are suffering? Administrators and principals say no, and national studies are mixed on linking principal experience to school performance.
"There's something to be said for experience, but it is one piece of the total puzzle," said Pat Kaupe, Palm Beach County schools' director of recruitment and retention and a former middle school principal.
Most important, she says, is getting the right "fit" for a school. That means some educators are stronger leaders in high poverty schools. Some principals are better suited for running secondary schools than elementary schools.
With the right skills, training and placement, a new principal can be just as effective as someone who's been at the job for two decades, Kaupe said.
In Palm Beach County, 76 percent of principals have been doing the job for 10 years or less, records show. Nearly 44 percent of the principals have five or fewer years of experience.
In Broward, the average principal probably has just five to seven years at the helm, said Lisa Maxwell, longtime executive director for the Broward Principal and Assistants Association.
"It is definitely trending younger," she said.
The same situation is happening across the country, said Dick Flanary, a senior director at the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
One of the key factors is that tougher state and federal accountability for schools is prompting older principals to retire and younger ones to leave. Educators are under intense pressure to produce higher test scores and learning gains for all groups of students.
"It has certainly pushed some people out of the field," said Flanary, who runs leadership programs for the association. "They see the reality of the job and they are not interested."
A University of Texas at Austin study, reported last year in Education Week, examined principal movement from 1996 to 2008 in Texas public schools.
Only half of new principals remained in the job for three years, with retention rates far worse for principals at low-performing schools. The principals said they went on to different careers, took administrator jobs or retired, the study showed.
Despite the heavy turnover, in Palm Beach and Broward counties waiting pools have hundreds of educators aspiring to principalships with heavy workloads and greater responsibilities.
"We're clearly into 12- to 14-hour work days," Maxwell said. "It's amazing anyone seeks out this job. They really are believers, the archangels of education."
So while today's principals may have limited experience, they're the ones willing to be held accountable for raising student achievement.
Eugina Smith Feaman of Cholee Lake Elementary in Greenacres is in her third year as principal. She says she embraces the higher standards, and draws upon her training and her background as an assistant principal and teacher.
"I come to the table with my experiences in education," said Feaman, 33, whose mother and father are retired principals from the county. "I can be just as successful as a principal with 10- to 20-plus years."
A December 2009 working paper, published by National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, explored whether there is any connection between experience and school performance by examining data for New York City schools.
Titled "School Principals and School Performance," it noted that previous studies by other researchers had conflicting conclusions. But the paper reported, "Our clearest finding is that schools perform better when they are led by experienced principals." It also cited "common sense" that workers become more productive with experience.
Principal Sharon Hench of H.L. Johnson Elementary School in Royal Palm Beach agrees. With 23 years as a principal, including in Miami-Dade and Duval counties, Hench, 55, has more experience than all but three principals in Palm Beach County.
"There are times I wish I could have gone back to the 80s and apologized to parents and teachers for decisions I had made," said Hench, adding that today, "I'm absolutely a stronger leader."
At Floranada Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, energetic Principal Keith Peters, 39, is off to a solid start in his second year in command of a school. He guided Floranada to an A rating from the state last year, after it had received a B grade for two straight years before he arrived.
Peters says credit should go to the entire faculty, staff and students. He said he is driven by a "passion to help children."
"I can't give the excuse it's my first year," he said of his promising debut.
Banyan Creek's Principal Fay jokes that he needs help identifying all of the Palm Beach County School District's new principals.
"You go to a principal's meeting and you wish they had shirts with numbers on them," he said. "There's so many principals I don't know."
Marc Freeman can be reached at mjfreeman@SunSentinel.com or561-243-6642 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 561-243-6642 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
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