W-patch
Webinar

Tried-and-tested Strategies to Teach Central Office Leaders the Role of the Principal

Recorded: February 24, 2016 (55 minutes)

It’s a common headache for central office leaders: the expectations and goals for principals have changed but not everybody in the central office knows what it means and how to deal with it.

Tackling this challenge and building a shared understanding of the role of the principal is key when focusing on instructional improvement. Hillsborough County Public Schools, a large school district in Tampa, Fl., took on this difficult issue and can show some impressive results.

CEL Associate Director Max Silverman, Amanda von Moos, managing director at The Central Office Project and Tricia McManus, executive director of leadership development in Hillsborough County Public Schools share tried-and-tested strategies to help central office staff understand the job of principals and how they can best support their work leading the improvement of student learning.

In this webinar you will learn:

  • How 73% of Hillsborough central office leaders came to understand the primary role of the principal as instructional leader.
  • How to engage central office leaders from all departments in thinking about how they support principals.
  • Replicable strategies for use in central offices of all sizes.

Webinar Resources

In this webinar, we introduce the second iteration of the Principal Support Framework and share a few useful resources from Hillsborough County Schools.

About the Presenters
Tricia McManus

Tricia McManus

For the past twenty-five years, Tricia McManus has served as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal in Hillsborough County Public Schools, six years of which she served as a turnaround principal in two high needs elementary schools.

She currently serves as executive director of leadership development for the school district. In this role, she provides training and support for school and district leaders and oversees the Hillsborough Principal Pipeline, which includes the recruitment, selection, pre-service training, hiring, induction, development, and evaluation of school leaders.

Max Silverman

Max Silverman

As an associate director at the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, Max Silverman provides leadership for CEL's district partnership work. He joined the Center in 2009, after leading high school reform efforts in the Highline Public Schools (Wash.) for nine years.

As a principal and central office leader, he successfully led the transformation to a portfolio of high schools focused on sustainable instructional improvement and personalization. His central office experience was focused on instructional leadership for ten high schools, particularly in the areas of literacy and math.

Amanda von Moos

Amanda von Moos

Amanda von Moos runs The Central Office Project, an organization dedicated to making central offices work better for schools. Amanda roots her work in a passion for building systems that enable principals to focus on teaching and learning, and a deep belief that lasting change only happens when the people are engaged in the process of reimagining and redesigning their own work.

For the past decade she has worked in various capacities to redesign systems that support schools, both as an internal staff member leading process redesign projects in Oakland Unified School District and as a consultant. She trains and writes extensively on how to do process redesign in complex and bureaucratic organizations.

Watch the webinar