District Administration - October 2009 - (Page 22)

MICHAEL SMITH, SUPERINTENDENT OAKLAND (ILL.) COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT #5 AdministratorProﬁle Social Media Connects Administrators Superintendent Michael Smith has a penchant for technology that’s taken him far. By Jennifer Chase Esposito MICHAEL SMITH ADMITS HE doesn’t talk much about his Web site or weekly blog with the staﬀ, school board or community in his rural Oakland, Ill., district, because most folks probably don’t know what a blog is. at’s not a disrespectful dig, but reality: In his agricultural district 200 miles south of Chicago’s bustle—comprising only 300 students, 50 staﬀ, two schools, and one principal— tending a Web site isn’t as high on anyone’s task list as teaching, farming the corn and soybean crops for which the region is known, or football. But it is high on Smith’s list. His twoyear-old site PrincipalsPage.com started as a way to help streamline a principal’s day and has grown to a 10,000-visitorsper-month site that the Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee and Reuters have recognized for its clever writing and usefulness to administrators. And the site’s accompanying blog, launched last year merely to drive traﬃc to the main page, has followers from as far as New Zealand. e site’s utilitarianism and the often-acerbic lilt in Smith’s posts earned him contributing writer positions with Converge magazine. Smith has done all this writing while helping Oakland make AYP for the three years of his tenure. The Site’s Start Smith launched PrincipalsPage.com as a repository for the important forms he created and collected while principal in Oakland from 2000 to 2004. “Its original purpose was simply to be a place for me to store forms, letters, etc., online,” he says. “I was moving to a diﬀerent oﬃce, and I didn’t want to throw away the items I had 22 October 2009 e Chicago Tribune and Sacramento Bee have recognized it for its usefulness to administrators. collected as principal … in case I got ﬁred as superintendent. Really.” Unlike Smith’s signature self-deprecation, PrincipalsPage.com is no-nonsense. Categories line the left of the home page linking to forms Smith hopes are as useful to other principals as they were to him: sets of interview questions for hiring English teachers, assistant principals, reading specialists and teacher aides; handbooks for administrators and students; and sin- Michael Smith Superintendent of Oakland (Ill.) CUSD #5 Age: 42 Salary: $95,000 Tenure: 3 years Students: 300 Staff and faculty: 50 Per-child expenditure: $9,245 Web site: www.teacherspage.org gular forms with, for example, sample contract language for various districtwide positions, information on how to identify bullying, and community service guidelines for high school graduation. “In Illinois there’s a listserv for principals and superintendents, and people would go on looking for an absentee letter, etc., so I’d say, ‘Go to PrincipalsPage.com.’ Before I knew it, it was bigger than I’d ever imagined,” he says.” Nancy Eskew was Oakland’s dean of students and curriculum director for 13 years and a 20-year second- and fourthgrade teacher before retiring last summer. She was also part of the team that hired Smith as superintendent, a move she calls “the smartest decision the district ever made,” thanks to Smith’s organizational skills and penchant for technology and for promoting it in Oakland. “He’s had principals from all over the country call or e-mail asking for certain pages,” says Eskew. “I’ve used PrincipalsPage several times throughout my administration, and I’ve told him many times that if he charged just $5 a year for a subscription, he’d be a millionaire. But he just wants the site to help people.” Today, PrincipalsPage.com features superintendent-related forms for one-stop information shopping. Smith has written many, and many principals have oﬀered their own original forms and documents to be posted along with his. The Blog’s Birth e blog started as a place to blow oﬀ some administrator steam. ough Smith weaves in personal information about his wife, daughter and dog, his sardonic District Administration http://www.PrincipalsPage.com http://www.PrincipalsPage.com http://www.PrincipalsPage.com http://www.PrincipalsPage.com http://www.PrincipalsPage.com http://www.teacherspage.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2009

District Administration - October 2009
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Security
College Prep
Stimulus Monitor
Administrator Profile
Professional Opinion
Crisis Response
Tech Disruptions
Digital Classrooms Take Flight
Measuring Success in Harrisburg
Reaching Graduation with Credit Recovery
Almost There?
Back to School for Retired Baby Boomers
Problem Solution
New Products
Product Focus
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
Understanding the Times

District Administration - October 2009