In the Midst of Pandemic: Starting a New Superintendency

First-timers hired during school shutdowns find creative ways to connect with their new boards and communities

Caroline Pate-Hefty made the biggest move in her professional career during the summer, leaving a student services position in suburban Chicago to take on her first superintendency in a small college town across the border in Wisconsin.

That transition in itself isn’t so remarkable. Hundreds of superintendencies across the country routinely change hands between the end of one school year and the start of the next.

But in Pate-Hefty’s case, the entire three-month-long hiring process took place in the uncertainty of a crippling public health crisis. Her first district interview occurred in the midst of Illinois’ stay-at-home order and entirely without in-person contact with either the school board with a vacancy or Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, the executive search firm hired to find her. She was named superintendent without shaking a single hand. And by June, Pate-Hefty was packing up and moving to Whitewater Unified School District, her new home.