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Serving as a secondary school principal is complex. Your role requires navigating instructional leadership, multi-content expertise and oversight, continuous improvement, and balancing the needs of students, teachers, and the community while aligning with district policies and expectations. Two common questions I’ve heard in my years working with secondary principals are: 1) What is my role when my supervisor or a district leader visits my school, and 2) How should I prepare for the visit?

Successfully managing relationships with district leaders and supervisors is crucial for your school’s success. Your supervisor and district leaders want you and your school to be successful, so a healthy partnership is essential. Here are some insights to help you effectively work with district leaders, manage up, and prepare for visits from your supervisors.

What to Do First

Whether working with your direct supervisor or another district official, your leadership can shine and improve through clear communication, understanding of district priorities, and healthy advocacy for your school.

1.  Establish clear communication channels. Clear and consistent communication is vital. Set up regular meetings or check-ins and school walk-throughs with your district leaders to discuss your school’s progress, challenges, and needs. Use these opportunities to build rapport and authentically share where you are leading strong and where you need support.

2.  Understand district priorities. District leaders have a broad view of the entire school system and specific goals they aim to achieve. Take the time to understand these priorities and align your school’s initiatives accordingly. This alignment not only shows that you are a team player who values the district’s vision but also helps secure support and resources for your school.

3.  Advocate for your school. You know your school’s needs best so you are the right person to advocate for them. Present data-driven evidence to support your requests for resources, staffing, or program support. Demonstrating how your school’s needs align with district goals can be particularly persuasive.

Managing Up

Simply put, managing up means understanding what your supervisor wants you to do and developing a positive and productive relationship and rapport. By gaining an awareness of what their goals are and how your supervisor operates, you can nurture a healthy relationship that is beneficial to not only both of you but also to the larger organization. When working to manage up with your supervisors, focusing on three key areas can be highly effective: relationships, communication, and priorities.

1.  Build and nurture relationships. Build a relationship of trust with your supervisors by being reliable, responsive, and consistent in your actions and communications. When requesting additional resources or support, be thoughtful with your advocacy by framing your needs in the context of how they will benefit not just your school but also align with the district’s mission and priorities. These strategies will help you not only gain the necessary support and resources for your school but also establish a strong, collaborative working relationship.

2.  Communicate proactively and transparently. It is important to keep your supervisors informed about school progress, challenges, and significant initiatives through regular, proactive, and transparent communication. This may occur in a variety of ways: regular one-on-one meetings, check-ins, school walk-throughs, data reviews, emails, and even text messages and phone calls. Be sure to learn your supervisor’s preferred communication channels and how you should reach out if you have questions. Proactively keep your supervisor up to date on the status of your projects, and any wins and challenges you are experiencing. In addition to sharing, be sure to actively listen during conversation and ask for feedback and ways you can improve since continuous improvement is the name of the game in educational leadership.

3.  Align school goals with district priorities. Make sure your school’s goals and initiatives are aligned with the strategic vision of the district. This shows your commitment to the district’s priorities and increases support for your projects. When highlighting your school’s successes, explicitly connect them to district goals, showcasing how your work is contributing to the overall success of the district. School districts are results oriented. An effective way to manage up as a principal is to acknowledge the importance of performance standards and meet or exceed them. Supporting your school team in maintaining performance standards helps your supervisor (and your team) succeed.

At a meeting of district principals and assistant principals, Lora de la Cruz, center, speaks with Bryant Shaw, right, principal of Casey Middle School, and Rhianna Burroughs, principal of Angevine Middle School. PHOTO COURTESY OF LORA DE LA CRUZ

It can be challenging when beginning a partnership with a supervisor, but it is well worth the effort to develop a productive relationship and establish a meaningful rhythm of sharing information about your school. When I was a new principal, I was not sure what to expect from supervisor visits, and no expectations were conveyed to help me understand how to prepare for them.

After fumbling through a couple of relatively shallow visits, during which my supervisor and I walked briefly through classrooms with her making no comments or asking questions about what we observed, I knew I needed to construct more meaningful school visits. I shaped subsequent ones in a way that included time to connect personally and professionally, time to share our school improvement work, time for classroom visits and proactively naming the “look-fors” I hoped we’d see, and time to debrief.

Finding the balance of not stepping on my supervisor’s toes while also making the visits more meaningful required me to be thoughtful about how I structured our visits. I kept them friendly and conversational, so they had the feeling and style of a thought partnership. This allowed me to demonstrate our school’s work, ask for input, and not only fortify the relationship with my supervisor, but also elevate my own leadership strategies.

Three Questions to Ask Yourself Before Supervisor Visits

Many principals wonder how to best prepare for a school visit by their supervisor or other district officials. It’s always wise to proactively prepare, and these three questions can guide that preparation:

1.  What are the key achievements and challenges since the last visit, and what data am I monitoring? Reflect on your school’s progress since the last visit. This might be in the form of a coaching cycle you are engaged in with a teacher, classroom observational data, improvements you are seeing in school data or instruction, or progress indicators toward your school goals. Have evidence of this data to share in the form of charts, graphs, anecdotal notes, and online systems. Identify key achievements to highlight and be prepared to discuss any ongoing challenges. Be open about your school’s strengths and weaknesses, and don’t shy away from discussing failures. Transparency builds credibility and shows that you are committed to genuine improvement. This reflection will help you provide a balanced and accurate update to your supervisor.

2.  How do our current efforts align with district goals? Be prepared to explain how your leadership efforts and school’s initiatives support district goals and how district resources and policies are being leveraged to enhance your school’s performance. Specifically identify how your work is connected to the district’s strategic objectives. Consider how to convey the collaboration and shared decision-making processes and the open communication within your school that are contributing to school improvement. When your school operates as a cohesive unit, it reflects positively in your interactions with district leaders and supervisors.

3.  What support or resources do we need? Identify any specific support or resources your school needs, or that you need. This includes needs for potential additional funding, professional development opportunities, or support for improvements. Data is a powerful tool for illustrating your school’s progress and needs. Use data to support your discussions with district leaders, whether it’s student performance metrics, attendance records, or survey results. Data-driven conversations are more likely to lead to actionable outcomes. Even when discussing challenges and needs, focus on potential solutions and maintain a positive outlook. Demonstrating resilience and a solution-oriented mindset will earn you respect and support.

One of the most valuable experiences I had as a principal was leading a school considered to be one of the “hardest” in the district. It was considered such due to a long history of underperforming, as well as a richly diverse student population whose families faced significant economic hardship.

In my first few months, I quickly realized that district leadership did not understand the school’s needs and did not adequately resource the school. I began to proactively share baseline data and our school improvement goals with not only my direct supervisor, but also other key district leaders. I invited content leaders to learn of the work we were doing and advocated for the resources we needed to be successful.

As our data began to improve, I celebrated openly by sharing it with my supervisor, the superintendent, and other district leaders. This led to a positive momentum cycle of consistent advocacy, securing some resources, continued gains in data, and celebration. I am proud that during my tenure, the school made significant progress, and we saw improved student outcomes. This work with my supervisor and other district leaders was integral to our success.

Conclusion

The complexity of being a secondary school principal elevates the priority of establishing a healthy and collaborative relationship with your supervisor and district leaders. Skillfully managing these relationships and preparing for school visits can lead to more effective leadership and greater school support
and success.

Remember, the goal is to create an environment where your school can thrive within the broader context of district priorities. By aligning your efforts with district goals while advocating for your school’s unique needs, you can ensure that your school remains a positive and productive place for students, staff, and the community.

Lora de la Cruz, EdD, is deputy superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, CO.