Superintendents up for top award reflect on long tenures

Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall and Fayette County schools Superintendent John DeCotis are among the finalists for the state’s top superintendent award.

The winner will be announced today during the winter conference of the Georgia School Boards Association and Georgia School Superintendents Association. The other finalists for the 2009 Georgia School Superintendent of the Year award are Beauford Hicks of Mitchell County Public Schools and Sam King of Rockdale County Public Schools.

We asked DeCotis and Hall to answer some questions about their careers. Here’s what they had to say:

Q: You’re among the longest-serving superintendents in the metro area. (DeCotis has served as superintendent for about 10 years and Hall has been with Atlanta for about nine years.) What’s the secret to this longevity?

DeCotis: Support of the Board of Education, community support of our school system and parental and business community involvement in our schools.

Hall: My longevity is a result of the broad-based support for Atlanta Public Schools in our community. Without the powerful coalition of parents, school board members, staff and civic and business leaders, Atlanta Public Schools would never have been able to make the remarkable turnaround we have experienced. … They recognized that stable leadership was a key component of sustaining the change in the way we deliver educational services in Atlanta.

Q: Explain your leadership style.

DeCotis: Collaborative, with client involvement.

Hall: Collaborative and transparent. … In addition, I really believe that a leader has to get other people to understand his or her vision, accept it, and be able to articulate it themselves.

Q: What was your biggest defeat as a superintendent? What did you learn from that experience?

DeCotis: The biggest defeat was dealing with the budget cuts starting with 9/11/01 through current times.

Hall: The E-rate program was by far my greatest disappointment. (A federal grand jury investigated how the district handled the federal program that funded technology equipment and services.) I made the assumption that the program was being run in the right way, only to find out that wasn’t true. The lesson I learned from that painful experience is that I can’t take anything for granted. Every piece of the Atlanta Public Schools requires careful scrutiny.

Q: You’ve been invited to meet with President-elect Barack Obama to discuss ways to improve public schools. What would you suggest?

DeCotis: Either fund the requirements or give flexibility in meeting the requirements of NCLB and IDEA. (NCLB is the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which sets rules over testing, teacher quality and other issues. IDEA is the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires schools to educate students with disabilities, regardless of the severity of disability.)

Hall: My first piece of advice deals with establishing national standards. … Those national standards should be competitive with the highest education expectations anywhere in the world. … I’d encourage the president-elect to look at proposals that emphasize quality professional development for all teachers and education leaders, offer increases in teacher salaries to attract the best and brightest to the profession, link teacher compensation to performance and create incentives and career ladders for teachers.

Q: What’s your favorite television show?

DeCotis: My interests are eclectic in nature.

Hall: CNN and Jay Leno.

Note: Comments were edited for space.