Changing face of school principals

“It feels like flying a plane while we’re building it,’’ said Kelly Hung, who this week begins her second year as principal at Phineas Bates Elementary School in Roslindale. “This job can completely consume you. It’s never ending. You wake up at night thinking about it.’’

At 33, and with a new baby at home, Hung, the 10th youngest out of 135 principals in the Boston public schools, in many ways personifies the changing face of today’s school principal.

As aging principals retire, young ones like Hung, who has only a few years of real classroom experience and a brief tenure as an interim principal on her résumé, are being hired to replace them. At issue is whether their enthusiasm and energy outweigh their inexperience to improve their school’s performance.

“There’s no question that there’s a national movement toward hiring younger principals,’’ said William Horwath, acting assistant superintendent for human resources at the Boston School Department.

A new 10-year survey of K-8 principals by the National Association of Elementary School Principals obtained by the Globe shows that almost 60 percent of principals are age 50 or older.

Last year, Hung was one of 18 new principals hired in the Boston school system. Their average age was just over 40, but specialists say an increasing number of thirty-something leaders like Hung are emerging. And while they may bring vitality and fresh ideas, they also must overcome their inexperience and the challenges of school performance and faculty relations.

One of the first lessons Hung learned on the job was that the first key decision every new principal faces is determining: What’s the issue here? Is it building maintenance? Teacher morale? Parental indifference?

She quickly pinpointed her school’s issue. “We really focused on reading and literacy,’’ she said. “Even in kindergarten, we have kids read aloud and ask comprehension questions. We stay away from yes and no. I worked on a solid writing curriculum that we all use in the same way. Before, it was not taught consistently.’’

It was a pivotal decision for a young, first-time principal eager to prove she belongs.

An analysis in May by The New York Times suggested it is not easy. Graduates of the nonprofit Aspiring Principals Program, which mints new principals in New York City, were less than half as likely to get A’s in the city’s school-rating system as those who did not attend and almost twice as likely to earn C’s or worse. (The study did not take into consideration that many of these new principals are sent to failing schools.)

Hung is a 2007 graduate of the Boston Principal Fellowship program, now starting its seventh year, where she taught in the classroom four days a week and took classes the fifth. But that program’s future is unclear. Earlier this summer, it was to be put on a one-year hiatus, with no firm plan to resume. Now, it will run for another year and then be reevaluated, Horwath said. The new emphasis, he said, will be to work with and promote assistant principals.

“Our big concern is the burnout factor for young principals,’’ Horwath said. “They get overwhelmed and at 35 leave the system altogether.’’

Were they not prepared for the pressure? Or did they just get tired of it?

“Can a young person be an effective principal?’’ said Kim Marshall, longtime principal at Mather School in Dorchester and a coach of young principals with the nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools. “Absolutely, with the right training and if the school is not impossibly difficult. The conversation must be turned from how to teach to learning results. I don’t think age is a big issue.’’

After Hung and her husband, Josh, had a baby boy, Asher, this summer, she returned to her post from maternity leave late last month. “Maternity leave is an oxymoron,’’ she said. “As a working mom, there’s never a really good time. If we wait for the perfect time, it will never happen.’’

While she was going through the Boston Principal Fellowship program, Hung earned a master’s in education administration from Boston College. She first taught in third-grade inclusion classes at the Jackson Mann School in Allston and served as a student support coordinator at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Brighton. Later, she served as interim principal at Joseph P. Manning School in Jamaica Plain before assuming the role at Bates in June.

“The first year you come in with ideals - ‘I’m going to fix the whole school,’ ’’ she said. “You have to prioritize, and that’s a tricky balance. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed.’’

But she maintains she didn’t. She arrived at Bates and, like all new principals, “hit the ground listening,’’ said Mary Nash, her academic superintendent. So what surprised Hung?

“I was surprised that people didn’t know where I stood on things. I didn’t necessarily tell parents ‘This is what we’re doing.’ I didn’t communicate well to them,’’ she said.

“I need to make sure that people understand the reasoning behind what I do.’’

At the start of last year, Hung met with every teacher individually and asked each: ‘What’s working well here? What needs improvement? Anything else I should know about you?’ What she heard was a desire not just for Bates to get better, but to get the word out about the good work happening there.

Jennifer Burg, who heads the parents council, which, among other things, fund-raises for Bates, is pleased with Hung’s performance. A survey of parents at the end of year, she said, suggested that some are very positive about Hung, a few negative, while the majority have taken a “wait to see what happens’’ attitude. To be sure, there are skeptics. One teacher said Hung started off well, but began to isolate herself as the year progressed. Burg said she had heard that, too, so everyone is watching closely how the young principal does this year.

In addition to focusing on reading comprehension, Hung created a rotating schedule to build in 90 minutes each week of common time with the faculty. Grade-level teacher teams met once a week to evaluate student work and assessment data.

Bates pupils have not done well on the statewide Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. According to results comparing performances in 2007 and 2008, fewer than half of Bates’s pupils scored “proficient’’ or “advanced placement.’’ In many cases, they fell far below those benchmarks.

“It’s really important to know kids that you’re not serving well,’’ Hung said about the MCAS. “We become more honest with ourselves. The MCAS is a tremendous tool, but I don’t believe any one tool should be the basis for student evaluation.’’

Also, Bates failed last year to meet the Average Yearly Progress goals in both English language arts and mathematics set by the federal government. “That’s my challenge,’’ she said.

On the other hand, Bates boasts a strong Advanced Work Class program for children in the fourth and fifth grades that has drawn raves from parents. Children in the program have the same teacher for both years. The pupils also have an accelerated curriculum with more homework than their peers.

Bates is small, with 16 classrooms, 39 staff members, and about 300 pupils. It was built in 1929 and shows it. Like most elementary schools, it has no assistant principal, so Hung is often stuck doing a lot herself.

Of course, it also means she can act quickly on her decisions. “I’m in complete control of how I run meetings,’’ she said. “I don’t have to manage someone else. I don’t have a person representing what I’m saying about things.’’

She arrived here in 1999 and started teaching in the Boston school system in 2002. Seven years later, she must be doing something right. Boston parents chose K1 at Bates for this fall in the city lottery system at double the rate of last year. And K2? That was up 50 percent.

When asked her thoughts on the coming year, she replied, “Ask me at the end of it.’’

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.

Correction: Because of reporting errors, a Page One story Monday about young principals in the Boston school system incorrectly identified the Average Yearly Progress report on school performance. Also, the highest performance level in the MCAS exams was incorrectly identified. It is Advanced.