Effective Superintendent-School Board Practices: Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Good Relationships With Your Board

Superintendents and board members are provided real-life vignettes highlighting challenges and successes, information on building relationships and managing conflict, and reflective practice questions and self-assessment.

Gloria L. Johnston has devoted over 40 years to a career in education. She currently coaches, mentors, and provides professional development for principals, central office administrators, superintendents, and school boards. The focus of her work is on systemic strategies that lead to improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap. Her years of service in PreK–12 education included serving as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, and 12 years as a superintendent of schools. She worked in urban, suburban, and rural school districts in Illinois, California, and Caracas, Venezuela. Most recently, she served as dean of the School of Education at National University, headquartered in San Diego, California.

Throughout her career, Johnston has been an invited speaker at state and national professional conferences, served on state and national educational and research committees, and has been awarded major professional development grants. She is coauthor of two books, Eight at the Top: A View Inside Public Education, a collection of stories about the work of school district superintendents, and Effective Superintendent-School Board Practices: Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Good Relationships With Your Board, a practical, experience-based look at the most important role the superintendent has in leading a school district.

Johnston earned her PhD in public policy analysis from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her MS in bilingual/bicultural education and BS in humanities (magna cum laude) from Northern Illinois University.

Prior to joining the 26,000-student Irvine Unified School District in Orange County, California, Gwen E. Gross served as superintendent in Manhattan Beach Unified School District, Beverly Hills Unified, Ojai Unified, and at the then one-school Hermosa Beach City School District. In addition to her 17 years as a superintendent, she has been an elementary and middle grades teacher, principal, director of operations, and faculty member at universities in the Midwest and on the West Coast. She was named as one of the “Top 100 Educators in North America” and was honored as the “2005 Superintendent of the Year” by Pepperdine University, where she has served as an adjunct professor of education leadership for 10 years.

Gross is active in many community and professional organizations, holding leadership positions in many of them, particularly with the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), where she has chaired the New Superintendents’ Annual Symposium, the 2007 superintendent symposium, served as the vice chair of the State Superintendents’ Committee, and has been named a Tri-County Superintendent of the Year. Together with several other superintendents, Gross coauthored Eight at the Top: A View Inside Public Education and Effective Superintendent-School Board Practices. She was a bimonthly columnist for the Beach Reporter newspaper serving Los Angeles County’s South Bay area and she has developed a series of creative communication documents for distribution to the many constituencies served by public schools.

Gross is received her BA from University of Wisconsin, MA from University of Akron, and PhD from Kent State University, and a postdoctoral certificate from Harvard University.

Peggy Lynch recently retired after serving for nearly seven years as the superintendent of the San Dieguito Union High School District, located in the northern part of San Diego County. Prior to San Dieguito, she was the superintendent of Brea Olinda Unified School District in Orange County, California. Her career spans 38 years and includes middle and high school teaching, high school assistant principal and principal, and assistant superintendent.

Lynch served on the San Diego County Department of Education Achievement Gap Task Force, as well as other county advisory committees. She was also co-chair of the San Diego and Imperial counties superintendents group for Association of California School Administrators (ACSA). She has chaired the Superintendents’ Symposium Committee for ACSA, as well as the organization’s annual conference. In Orange County, she also chaired the county superintendents’ organization. Her memberships include Southern California Superintendents, Suburban School Superintendents, American Association of School Administrators, and Association of California School Administrators.

She received her undergraduate degree from Parsons College in Iowa, her master’s from California State University, Fullerton, and her doctorate from the University of La Verne.