Time is not something most superintendents have to spare. A new poll examines the reasons for that situation, along with the top stressors for superintendents and their levels of job satisfaction.
The answers have everything to do with the district’s size, declares a new RAND Corporation survey, which found a clear divide in stressors between superintendents of districts with fewer than 3,000 students and school systems serving 10,000 students or more. In spring 2024, leaders in the smaller districts were most concerned with—and spending the most time on—their budgets while their counterparts in larger systems felt more pressure from the “intrusion of political issues and opinions,” the report states.
But politics appears to be having less—though still a substantial—impact. The number of superintendents who cited political interference as a top source of stress has declined 28 percentage points, from 88% in 2023 to 60% in 2024.
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Other top sources of stress for superintendents in small and large districts included student mental health, staffing shortages, educator mental health and academic performance.
Small district leaders also cited facilities maintenance and operations as one of the most time-consuming activities. Large district leaders reported spending the most time on external and internal communications.
“The differences are so large as to suggest that the very job of the superintendent—and, therefore, likely the skills needed most to succeed in the job—is substantially different in large (urban) versus small (mostly rural) districts,” the authors of the report note.
This final stat may come as good or bad news: six out of 10 superintendents said this spring that the stresses of their job “are worth it.” That number was the same in 2023, the report concluded.
