Eliminate Hoops

One thing you can’t recycle is wasted time. - Anonymous

If it were easy it would have been done before. —Jeanne Yaeger
Resist the temptation to make your employees jump through hoops. Instruction is the most important part of the school day. Don’t develop rules for the few who abuse things in your school. Conduct yearly staff meetings to discuss eliminating unnecessary burdens placed on your staff. Think of ways to reduce paper demands on your staff so they may concentrate on student learning in the classrooms. Often, bureaucracy increases as an organization grows. Leaders must learn to run a large school like a small school.

Smaller schools tend to have less red tape and thus run faster and sleeker. As a school grows in numbers, more personnel are hired, and more rules are developed to run the school. Having worked in both a small district and a large district, I saw firsthand that school principals do it all in smaller districts. Right or wrong, they do it all. Customer satisfaction is about the same between small and large districts. Principals learn to rely on their building employees to help run the school.

Large school districts may have several assistant superintendents, supervisors, directors, managers, and support personnel. Principals in larger school districts find they have more people helping them but may know less; and it may take longer for them to finish tasks as a result of the bureaucracy. Resist adding hoops for the employees. The principal needs to run a large school district like a fast and mobile small district.