New KC school superintendent sees job getting bigger

John Covington knew running Kansas City’s schools would be a bear of a job. One month in, though, he’s finding the challenges even greater than he expected.

He’d done his homework, John Covington said. He knew running Kansas City’s schools would be a bear of a job.

One month in, though, he’s finding the challenges even greater than he expected.

“As I evaluate the structure and the culture,” he told The Kansas City Star, “the scope of the work is going to be larger than I imagined.”

It doesn’t help that he has large holes in the district’s top administration.

And top talent isn’t rushing to fill those positions, either. He’s having trouble, at least at the start, persuading others to make the same leap he has made, taking on a district trying to turn itself around.

“I have talked to several people” about administrative posts, Covington said. “They say, ‘John, you know I’d do anything for you. But you can’t ask me to come to Kansas City … How can you ask me to come when you don’t know how long you’re going to be there?’ ”

Right now, he’s recruiting cabinet members on promises.

He has it written into his contract — in agreement with the school board — that the board will limit its governing to policy and “not interfere with the superintendent’s performance of his duties and responsibilities…”

He says he believes this board’s spoken intent to break its micromanaging habits of the past. He and the board are meeting this weekend to further shape their relationship.

The task for Covington now is getting potential cabinet members “to understand that this board is new,” he said. “They are committed to letting the superintendent and his staff be responsible for day-to-day management. They’re showing it in the contract. Seeing is believing. I have no reason to doubt that they won’t.”

Covington said he wants to have his leadership circle in place by the start of the school year Aug. 24.

They’ll have a heavy load in front of them.

Unlike his predecessor, Anthony Amato, who rushed in with plans for major curriculum and program changes immediately when he started in July 2006, Covington talks of first taking a hard look at what’s working — and what isn’t.

The district’s teachers and administrators are already immersed in creating a turnaround plan with the state that has to succeed if the provisionally accredited district is to avoid a threat of state takeover.

Covington doesn’t have a chief academic officer or deputy superintendent. He’s missing school leadership and curriculum leaders. He lacks a chief financial officer. Consultants are managing human resources and operations.

“We need people in place to help drive those decisions” in programs and curriculum, Covington said. “There is not enough time to make those kinds of decisions before school starts.”

The teachers union likes the sound of that, said President Andrea Flinders.

Amato had taken over with similar gaps in his administrative structure, but received the board’s approval to make sweeping curriculum changes in the weeks before school started.

“Teachers don’t need any more change at this point,” Flinders said. “Curriculum needs to be looked at, but with the proper input and proper training. I hope he keeps to that philosophy.”

Some programs and curriculum should likely stay in place, Covington said.

“Despite popular belief that the district should be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch, that’s not true,” he said. “We do have pockets of excellence. Good things are going on. The question should be: What can we do to replicate the good that’s going on?”

There is, however, an overarching problem of a culture that must change quickly, he said. That’s what is looming larger than he anticipated.

“We don’t have the structure to do things the way they are normally done in high-functioning districts,” he said.

Too much working in isolation, he said. Too much work going on without connection to other departments or overall goals.

As an example, he describes a common lack of communication between business departments and human resources departments that has left too many job applicants in limbo.

“They end up somewhere else and we wonder how we lost a good candidate,” he said.

“I want to get my senior leadership team in place,” he said. “We will establish credibility that this team can lead, that it has the ability to get the job done. We have to create an environment that is hopeful and re-energized for change that will be coming.”