GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

City principals are increasingly unhappy with their jobs, according to the union that represents them.

In the latest newsletter from the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, President Ernest Logan reported that 73 percent of union members are not happy with their workload, compensation, and job security. That’s up from 68 percent the last time the union surveyed its members, in 2009.

The survey of CSA members was conducted by Global Strategy Group in September and October, according to Chiara Coletti, a union spokeswoman. She said assistant principals and other administrators in the union were less dissatisfied, leading to an overall dissatisfaction rate of 59 percent. In 2009, that number was 48 percent.

In recent years, principals have seen their role shift from setting a vision and strategy for instruction to managing a seemingly unending list of procedural tasks. In his first communication with principals in April, Chancellor Dennis Walcott promised to cut down on their paperwork load, and in November he outlined steps that he said would cut down time spent on administrative tasks by an hour a day. 

Coletti said the survey was conducted too early to register whether those steps were paying off. She said union members were neutral on Walcott himself; Logan called the chancellor a “good hearted placeholder.”

But in his letter, Logan said years of administrative reorganizations, budget cuts, and added pressure without reward had threatened to turn educators off from becoming school leaders.

“Today, when there are no raises, no good-faith contract negotiations and little promise of happier economic times, we can’t count on an endless supply of experienced APs, [education administrators], and teachers to inherit the Principal’s chair,” Logan wrote. “They have a bird’s eye view of what could happen once they sit in that chair.”

The union’s survey results are very different from the city’s determination of principal satisfaction, but they share the same trajectory. Last year, a city survey of principals found that nearly three quarters reported that they were happy with the support they were getting from the Department of Education. But even that number was the lowest since the city began surveying principals in 2007.

Asked about the CSA survey, Stephen Duch, the principal of Hillcrest High School in Queens, cited stalemates in labor negotiations as one frustration for principals. “There are a lot of things that we know would make for better schools, including a revised teacher evaluation, including having our teachers have a contract, including the fact of having the supervisors have a contract,” he said. He added, ”Maybe since the new year has just begun, we can all exhale and start all over again and attempt to work collaboratively with each other for what we really believe is our core values.”

Duch also cited tight budgets as a factor. “We know that we’re in declining times of resources, and that we have to do more with less,” he said. “We’re trying to introduce so many new things at the same time that some days, it can seem overwhelming or insurmountable.”