0.3 Allen, a., & Gawlik, m. (july 2009). preparing district and  (Page 7/10)

Because charter school leaders are in charge of an independent school with an autonomous board, they not only serve as instructional leaders, but also must manage much of the same responsibilities as a district superintendent. Campbell, Gross,&Lake (2008) note that charter school leaders face the same challenges as their district school counterparts, namely setting and maintaining a school’s vision, establishing trust between adults and children, managing resources, and balancing pressures that exist both inside and outside the school. However, the job of the charter school principal goes beyond that of a district principal because there is no central office providing support. Charter school principals are responsible for finding and maintaining school facilities, handling finances, raising money, hiring faculty members and negotiating relations with boards, parents and charter school authorizing agencies. They are also responsible for recruiting students, since charter schools operate as schools of choice. In a survey of charter school principals across six states, the National Charter School Research Project at the University of Wyoming, researchers found that facilities issues are one of the top concerns of charter school principals. Charter schools typically must find and fund their own buildings (Campbell, Gross,&Lake, 2008). Other top concerns include personnel and budget issues, particularly recruiting and paying for quality teachers, and finding time for strategic planning.

Crafting possibilities for charter school leadership programs

As leadership programs emerge for charter school leaders, we suggest program curricula include courses on the core mission of public education, including the role of education to bring diverse individuals together, to create cohesion, and prepare citizens to be deliberative, engaging, citizens who can work and live in diverse societies. We also recommend that emerging leadership programs look at both management and leadership skills of educational leaders and define how those skills may be balanced in different types of schools. Specifically, we suggest:

• Emerging school leadership programs for charter school leaders offer core courses in the foundations of public education, including purposes of public schooling for democratic engagement in diverse communities.
• Leadership programs for both charter and district school leaders offer core courses in working with charter school boards, to help board members understand their role in overseeing a public school. These courses should attend to the differences between public and private governance, including the responsibility of board members to provide citizens the opportunity for open access to information and opportunities to engage in discussions with school governors.
• All leadership programs should consider both the management and leadership functions of school leaders and be able to distinguish the right balance for the right context. In the case of charter school leadership programs, curricular needs to include management skills similar to superintendents and CEOS, while also providing students with skills in managing the multiple expectations charter school leaders must face.
• Courses in school-community relations should go beyond defining community as the students and parents within a given school, even if the school is a charter school. As a public school, charter schools are a part of the larger public school delivery system, and school leaders must understand how the independent school fits within that larger community. This includes both the responsibility public school leadership have to the local community and the responsibility community members have to the school. School-community perspectives can also offer prospective leaders insight as to how to partner with the community in a way that benefits the holistic development of students.
• Traditional school leadership programs should be expanding their offerings to include courses on the charter school principalship, highlighting both similarities and differences between leadership in traditional schools and leadership in autonomous public schools.
• The core values and standards of public education leadership need to be central to any school leadership program, with an eye on what makes school options “public.” Therefore, all programs that prepare public school leaders should offer prospective leaders opportunities to explore the goals of public education, the dilemmas these goals pose such equity in access and opportunity, and how school leaders might best address these issues.