Between T-Rex & King Kong
By Jill Levy

I recently found myself talking to the captains of industry between King Kong and a T-Rex.

Not a clever metaphor alluding to a conversation with the governor and the mayor, I was actually standing between a towering, roaring robotic dinosaur and a Lego-built King Kong, two of the toy exhibit tourist attractions at the Toys ‘R’ Us store in Times Square.

The reception I was attending there was sponsored by PENCIL, Inc., the organization that sponsors the Principal for a Day program.

The orientation provided an opportunity for policy makers, headliners, and most important, executives from the corporate sector, to meet with principals to exchange information about how to run an institution – public or private – in an efficient manner.

Guess what I discovered? You can’t run a business the way NYC’s been doing it in schools. Oh, of course, principals manage somehow, but the executives I spoke to were aghast at how we are forced to run our schools.

Talking to Jack Rabbit, a McDonald’s executive, I turned the conversation to the management structure at his company. I asked a principal from Queens, “How many students do you have at your school, how much staff, how many supervisors?”

“Thirteen hundred kids, over 50 teachers and other staff and there’s me at the head of this and only one additional supervisor.”

I turned to Jack. “Could you manage a McDonald’s that way?”

His mouth opened and he stood there in shock. “We couldn’t run a company like that,” he said when he regained his composure. At McDonald’s he has one supervisor for every six employees.

One to six. Only in their wildest dreams, could educators imagine what they could accomplish with such a ratio in their schools. Do you know what another executive said when I told him about our staffing ratios? “That’s unbelievable!” He’s right! It is!

And that’s what a program like PENCIL can really accomplish. Giving principals an opportunity to get the word out about some of the enormous roadblocks that impede educational progress. This particular roadblock must be removed. We simply don’t provide the supervisory support for employees that they need. We don’t provide the principals with enough appropriately licensed supervisors to run the schools.

Some elementary schools don’t have an assistant principal. Many have only one. Our high schools have more, but let’s not get excited – most principals work in schools with several thousand children and well over several hundred teachers and other staff with minimal support. It would be as if the police department lost all its sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. You wouldn’t want a precinct house with a large number of new and inexperienced patrolmen making the rounds without proper supervision. We don’t want the same thing to happen to our schools.

A new round of budget cuts means we stand to lose hundreds more assistant principals and supervisors. We need supervisors to support and guide the teaching and support staff. A recent California Polytechnic State University study established that the ratio of teachers to students in 1,000 California schools was not significant in improving SAT scores, but the ratio of assistant principals to students was.

The city is demanding that we continue to be fully responsible for everything that occurs in the schools and then leaves it up to us to figure out some way to be in 12 places at one time. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it’s a terrible way to run a business. And we are in a business – the business of educating children.

Jill Levy is the president of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA).

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