Katz, s. (march 2010). women superintendents: standing for social  (Page 3/9)

Six women superintendents agreed to participate in the study. Five of the women led districts in a Midwestern metropolitan area and one was located in a rural, western part of the state. Each of the six women was interviewed twice; interviews lasted from one to two hours, were audio-taped, and transcribed verbatim. Data came from the interview transcripts, my field notes, and personal journal. The interview guide was sent to each participant before the first interview. Transcripts of the interviews were sent to each of the participants after each interview for member checking. One woman seemed very excited after reading her transcript as she said that she felt good to be able to “put into words” how she felt about the issues of social justice in her district.

In the next section, a brief profile of each woman regarding the racial composition of students and teachers in the district is provided, and data from the interviews regarding the participants’ individual issues and personal experiences is included. In describing the racial and ethnic background of students and teachers, the terms from the state report card are used: Black, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, and White. All participants’ names are pseudonyms and there are no references to names of school districts, school buildings, and staff and stakeholders in the districts.

Participants

From a student attending the district schools to teacher to superintendent (in the position for the past six years), Karen said that her school district is “the only place I’ve every worked.” The district is a large high school district which draws students from several towns that are not diverse by race but somewhat diverse by class. Students attending the three high schools are 93% Black and 4% Hispanic, while the district’s teachers are 67% White and 32% Black. The district houses 6,700 children from 13 communities and nine feeder schools. As Karen stated, “We had to organize ourselves to address those major concerns” [coming from so many communities]. Karen who is African American made an interesting statement when asked if her vision for her school district included social justice. She said, “Because I am female and because I am a person whose culture is different than the majority, social justice for me is not something I do, it is something I live.”

Fay led a district in a small town in a rural part of the state. There is a large, state university in the town. Fay has been an educator her entire career. Beginning as a teacher, Fay worked as a school leader in another state and returned to her home state to serve as a superintendent. Her district is a unit PreK-12 school district. In this state, most districts are either elementary (PreK- grade 8) or high school districts (grades 9-12), so unit districts are not the norm. According to the district report card, the students are 85% White, 8% Black, and 3% Asian with a very small percentage of Hispanic students; 99% of the district’s teachers are White. Thirty-five percent of the students are considered low-income. Fay, a European American described her background growing up in a working class, small town and one of the poorest in the state. For Fay’s parents, this was a move “to improve their status in life.” Her parents did not graduate high school, came from the “boot hills of Missouri,” and had seasonal work picking and chopping cotton. Her father could not read nor write, worked two 8-hour jobs and because of this, he wanted Fay, the oldest of several children, to have a good education and “not live the life of manual labor.” Fay’s particular social justice issue in her district was to improve teacher expectations for students of low-income status.