ADMINISTRATORS’ WORKLOAD: Assistant Principals

By Sayne Maza, in the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update

smf: Those who would attack LAUSD from without or within like to hang blame on Administrators – archetypical middle managers like the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert who spend the taxpayers’ money and ruin the lives of kids and the careers of teachers while ignoring parents.

You probably read "Up The Down Staircase":

During what was presumably my lunch period, Admiral Ass (a Mr. McHabe, who signs himself Adm. Asst.) appeared in my room with Joe Ferone.
"This boy is on probation," he said. "Did he show up in homeroom this morning?"
"Yes," I said.
"Any trouble?" the Admiral asked.
There we stood, the three of us, taking each other's measure. Ferone was watching through narrowed eyes.
"No. No trouble," I said.       Part I, ch. 7

The cardinal sin, strange as it may seem in an institution of learning, is talking. There are others, of course — sins, I mean, and I seem to have committed a good number. Yesterday I was playing my record of Gielgud reading Shakespeare … and I had succeeded, I thought, in establishing a mood. I mean, I got them to be quiet, when — enter Admiral Ass, in full regalia, epaulettes quivering with indignation. He snapped his fingers for me to stop the phonograph, waited for the turntable to stop turning, and pronounced:
"There will be a series of three bells rung three times indicating Emergency Shelter Drill. Playing records does not encourage the orderly evacuation of the class."                  Part II, ch. 9

That guy.

The truth is that California has less administrators-and-support-staff-per-student than any other state  And, as you read on, you will discover that AP's do more than they used to in the hallowed "Golden Age of California Education” …which was making sure that boy's hair was short and girl's hemlines were long.

Assistant Principal Sayne Maza, of Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies (the largest magnet school in the Los Angeles Unified School District - 2100 students in grades 4-12) addressed the following comments to District leadership – reprinted in the Week of Oct 3 AALA Weekly Update.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I received calendar dates for the District and Local District meetings I am expected to attend.

Does anyone outside of the schools really think administrators have the time to attend even one of these meetings?

I’m not going to give a litany of all the work I have to do as an Assistant Principal, for I know everyone works as hard as I do, and everyone knows what each other’s job entails. But I will say that I have no time to attend any off-campus or nonschool hours meetings because I don’t even have the time to do MY job.

I can’t do MY job because. . . oh yeah, we lost an administrator, and my coadministrators and I have had to take up the slack. I haven’t even had time to schedule my classroom observations because of all the other tasks heaped on me. I can’t do those extra administrative duties because, oh yeah, we lost our locker clerk, and guess who is the new locker clerk? I can’t issue all the lockers in a timely manner because guess who is the new textbook clerk? Yeah, you got it. I just finished scanning 12,000 books.

Next week we will lose an attendance office clerk. ‘spect I’ll be taking on those duties, too. Hope we don’t lose our nurse.

So I hope I can be forgiven for not attending any nonessential, nonmandatory meetings, for I will most likely be unpacking boxes of textbooks, bar-coding them, scanning them, following up on missing orders, assigning lockers to new students, checking lockers and trying to open them, doing reports and writing plans that another administrator was supposed to do, while not getting to my own duties—unless I continue staying until 10:00 p.m. and come in on weekends, which I’m currently doing.

Laugh or cry?

I won’t cry. I wouldn’t give the District the satisfaction.