My colleague Sarah Sparks has an interesting blog post up today that contends principals would be able to spend more time on instructional leadership if they had a designated staff person to handle non-instructional tasks.
The study came from Policy Studies Associates, Inc. in Washington, which tracked 181 schools nationwide who are participating in the National School Administration Manager Innovation Project. These professionals take care of such issues as supervising the cafeteria or managing school budget issues.
I wrote an article about school administration managers in 2008. Even then, principals were seeing dramatic changes in their professional lives when they were able to focus more on classroom issues.The challenge for districts is finding the resources in their budgets to hire an additional administrator.
Are there any principals out there who have SAMs (or other people who serve in that capacity) in your schools? How have you made this partnership work in your school?