‘I Wouldn’t Want Your Job’

My View

In the early 1990s, Ohio was experiencing a much worse than anticipated winter. I was a superintendent of a rural district east of Columbus who ended up cancelling classes for more than 20 days. Athletic contests were postponed, school events were scrapped, and people huddled in their homes for most of two months, coping with unrelenting bad weather.

In this era pre-internet, there were arguments in the state legislature over how school days should or could be made up. Should we extend the hours each day or extend the school year into summer? Cancel spring break? Everyone had an opinion.

I remember being inside a grocery store when a woman I did not know approached me and asked, “Are you the school superintendent?“ After I said I was, she shared her strong views about what she thought I should do to make up the lost class time and added memorably, “I wouldn’t want your job.”