“The first couple of years as an administrator are really tough and overwhelming. You’re thinking every week, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t wait until the school year is over,’” former M-A Instructional Vice Principal Steve Lippi said.
Over the past 10 years, M-A has welcomed 13 new administrators. Of those 13, only four still work at M-A.
Carlmont High School, on the other hand, has had the same administrative vice principals since 2014. Sequoia High School has had the same AVPs since 2017, and Woodside High School has had the same AVPs since 2018.
M-A stands out as the only school in the District with such frequent turnover. Administrators leave M-A for different reasons: some are promoted, some retire, and some are overwhelmed by the role’s difficulty.
Being a high school administrator is challenging at any school, but M-A’s unique demographics and intensity create specific demands that contribute to its high turnover rates.
Occasional turnover is necessary and beneficial: new administrators bring new ideas for school improvement. Frequent turnover, however, makes it difficult for an administrative team to collaborate efficiently and help teachers and students.
Our District must provide more formal support for new administrators to improve retention, allowing them to grow and create meaningful change.
Why is it hard to be an administrator?
Being a high school administrator isn’t easy. The position requires working long hours, facing stressful environments, and balancing the concerns of students, parents, and the District. All of this makes it an intense and tiresome job that requires constant vigilance.
To better understand these challenges, the M-A Chronicle interviewed 12 previous and current District administrators, nine of whom have worked at M-A.
“I would never do this job if I had small kids because it disproportionately puts a lot of pressure on your spouse,” seven-year Woodside AVP Chuck Velschow said. After-school events, sports games, and meetings can keep administrators out of the house three to four nights a week.
Administrators are also responsible if something goes awry at supervised events. “Every time there’s an event on campus, administrators are carrying this concern of, ‘This better go okay. I hope this is safe.’ You constantly feel that, and it’s exhausting,” M-A Principal Karl Losekoot said.
On top of their daily tasks, administrators deal with unpredictable student conflicts and parent complaints. A teacher can send a conflict to an administrator, but an administrator has no one to call to resolve an issue for them.
“You can walk into your office, and somebody will walk through your door. You’ll get a phone call, and you have to react quickly to what’s going on,” Lippi said. “There could be some student discipline thing you’re dealing with at 4 p.m., and that’s going to keep you on campus for a while.”
“Even when I’m at home, I’m still working,” M-A AVP Amy Hanson said. “If there’s an emergency—like a suicide risk through the ‘Say Something’ line—we get called, as we should. But that call could come at two o’clock in the morning. If you do that long enough, it can affect your marriage, your family life, and things like that.”
I would never do this job if I had small kids because it disproportionately puts a lot of pressure on your spouse.
Chuck Velschow, Woodside AVP
Even worse, administrative credential programs often lack sufficient training for real-life scenarios, failing to adequately prepare new administrators for their roles.
“There’s no training for a lot of what we do except for learning by trial,” former M-A AVP Nicholas Muys said. “I literally moved into my office, and I had a Title IX case—it was one of the first things I dealt with. I had no idea what the protocols were for a Title IX investigation, and I had a binder, but no one had really gone through the process with me.”
Why is it hard to be an administrator at M-A?
High administrative turnover rates are a national issue. The average principal tenure in the U.S. is four years, according to a 2019 study. In California, principals typically serve for even shorter periods, with nearly 25% leaving their schools each year. M-A’s retention rates may not stand out nationally, but they’re a major outlier within our District, indicating that M-A poses distinct challenges for its administrators.
While major time commitments and unexpected situations are inherent to an administrator’s job, M-A’s environment intensifies these challenges, which can lead to burnout.
Even though M-A has one more AVP than every other District school, administrators feel spread too thin. “At M-A, it sometimes felt like 24/7 with all the activities, events, and sports teams,” TIDE Academy principal Simone Rick-Kennel said. Rick-Kennel worked at M-A for 13 years in all three administrative roles, including principal. She then moved to TIDE, a newly opened District high school with around 200 students, in 2021.
M-A’s distinctive student population from Atherton, Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, and Redwood City requires administrators to respond to a vast range of needs. “We have a very diverse student body, not only racially but also socioeconomically, and those gaps are sometimes really hard to bridge on our campus and in our classrooms,” M-A AVP Elaine Rivera-Rios said.
“I may have one parent who wants to talk to me because their kid is super stressed about meeting a deadline, and then there are the other kids where it’s more like, ‘How do I encourage you to get to class?’” Rivera-Rios added.
We’re not good at supporting people in what is a really difficult job, because once you’re on the ground, everything comes at you fast and furious. Especially in the AVP role, in the disciplinary area, there is no time for reflection.
Liane Strub, English Department Chair and former PAR coach
National data shows that principals in schools serving ethnically and socioeconomically diverse populations are 60-70% more likely to leave.
“M-A can feel like a really intense place to work because we genuinely want to serve at another level and operate with excellence all the time,” Rivera-Rios said. “Some people may fall short of it.”
M-A’s high administrative turnover is nearly all within the AVP office. While all three current AVPs are in their first or second year, IVP Emily Rigotti has been an M-A administrator since 2019, and Losekoot since 2011. IVPs and principals undoubtedly face heavy workloads and stress, but AVP positions can be particularly unsustainable due to their focus on discipline.
“When you’re in an AVP position at M-A, you’re putting out a lot of fires, and your job becomes more about being a disciplinarian,” former M-A AVP JC Farr said. “For some people, that isn’t what they got into education for.”
When you’re in an AVP position at M-A, you’re putting out a lot of fires, and your job becomes more about being a disciplinarian. For some people, that isn’t what they got into education for.
JC Farr, former M-A AVP
“If you are in charge of discipline for 10 years, you get sick of another vape or another fight. It can be draining,” Hanson said.
“People expect you to change the behavior of kids, and that can wear on an administrator because your kids misbehave due to many factors, and some may be out of your direct control,” Farr said. External determinants like socioeconomic status and living circumstances can directly affect a student’s behavior at school.
“Your performance is based on the kids and how they are responding, and their behavior becomes a reflection of your leadership,” Farr added.
“We’re not good at supporting people in what is a really difficult job, because once you’re on the ground, everything comes at you fast and furious. Especially in the AVP role, in the disciplinary area, there is no time for reflection,” M-A English Department Chair Liane Strub said. Strub, who has worked at M-A for 30 years, formerly coordinated with administrators and mentored teachers as a Peer Assistance and Review coach.
Stress isn’t always the main reason AVPs leave: the AVP role is often considered an entry-level administrative job, so many are hired elsewhere for higher positions.
“If you’re doing a good job here—such a diverse school where you’re serving such different populations—it makes you an appealing candidate for other positions,” Losekoot explained. “But maybe if administrators had a better work-life balance at M-A, they wouldn’t take that job and they’d stay.”
Farr left in 2016 to become principal at Tamalpais High School, AVP Janelle Bugarini left in 2019 to become the English Learners and Literacy Coordinator at the District, AVP Tara Charles left in 2023 to become an IVP at Sequoia High School, and AVP Stephen Emmi left in 2023 to become a wellness coordinator at the District.
Muys left M-A in 2024 to teach English at Middle College. “I miss teaching, and I miss using that part of my brain,” he said in an interview a few weeks before his last day at M-A. “But I’m also tired. This is tiring work.”
The past few years have been even more tiring than usual: as schools returned to in-person learning after the pandemic, administrators were forced to either revive past operating systems or create new ones. “When we got back, we had to reinvent all of these processes to figure out how to make things run efficiently. That was a lot of work, and it continues to be a lot of work,” M-A librarian and former PAR coach Catherine Burton-Tillson said. Burton-Tillson has worked at M-A for 26 years.
Since the pandemic, M-A’s AVP turnover rate has surged, with annual departures becoming standard. This constant movement creates instability, where turnover leads to more turnover.
M-A has also found itself in numerous public controversies over the past few years, far more than the average high school or other District sites. Administrators are often named in lawsuits and are responsible for communicating with staff, parents, and outside organizations if issues escalate.
In the past three years alone, M-A administrators faced heated conflicts over detracking, lawsuits after an altercation between a student and police, and public records requests and lawsuits alleging failure to protect students from antisemitism after a controversial Ethnic Studies presentation that made national news.
Dealing with lawsuits and conflicts is an inherent part of being a high school administrator, but its abnormal frequency at M-A puts extra pressure on administrators.
The consequences of high administrative turnover
Occasional administrative turnover isn’t a problem. In fact, bringing in new perspectives can be helpful. But for fresh ideas to have positive impacts, new administrators must have the chance to collaborate with more experienced ones.
“What helps is having new perspectives and people who have been around for a while and have institutional knowledge,” 10-year Woodside AVP Wendy Porter said. “You can remember a lot of what’s happened over the course of the school’s history, and that helps with understanding how the community has developed, changed, or remained the same.”
When turnover is frequent, though, problems begin to outweigh benefits. “When you start with someone new, there’s onboarding that takes some time. The impact might be that you’re spending more time learning the system as opposed to growing the system for the better,” Losekoot said.
The longer a professional team of any sort has worked together, the more they are able to solidify individual roles that complement each other without overlapping or leaving gaps.
In the 2023-24 school year, M-A AVP Jessica Magallanes abruptly left M-A after just one semester. After a few months of having just two AVPs, M-A hired Jonathan Ho, who served as an interim AVP during the final quarter of the school year. “That transition of having three AVPs, then having two, and then Mr. Ho—adjusting to all of those changes and taking on different responsibilities that I was not initially assigned was challenging,” Hanson, who was in her first year as an AVP, said.
Hanson came to M-A from Woodside, where she taught Spanish, to become an AVP. She recently announced she will return to Woodside next school year to serve as an AVP.
Administrators will tell staff, ‘This is how we do attendance,’ or ‘This is how we do behavior referrals,’ and then, when there’s turnover, you get a new person who operates in a different way, and you have to learn that all again.
Catherine Burton-Tillson, librarian and former PAR coach
Having long-term administrators improves connections with families and carves clearer roles for each staff member. “People like consistency,” Hanson said. “When there are new people, there’s kind of a relearning process for students, parents, and community members.”
The vast majority of students don’t regularly interact with administrators. But, for the small portion who may have behavioral challenges and visit the AVP office frequently, maintaining a strong bond with an administrator leads to more personalized and effective solutions.
“If a student ends up in the office because they’ve been in a fight, having an earlier relationship with that AVP is going to make it possible to have a constructive conversation,” Strub said. “If you start as a freshman and you forge a relationship with an administrator, and then he’s gone when you’re a junior, you will feel that loss.”
This continuity is also important for teachers because administrators serve as the bridge between staff, parents, and the District. Teachers need to be able to trust that administrators will stand up for them, especially in the face of conflict. “A teacher might be called into the principal’s office about a call from a parent. When you’re at that point where you’re meeting with the parents, you really need to know that the principal is going to stand with you,” Strub said.
Administrative turnover also destabilizes a resource that teachers should be able to depend on—their supervisors. “Administrators will tell staff, ‘This is how we do attendance,’ or ‘This is how we do behavior referrals,’ and then, when there’s turnover, you get a new person who operates in a different way, and you have to learn that all again,” Burton-Tillson said.
“In my first semester, there was always something new that was coming up. And then finally, during the second semester, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve dealt with something like this before. I know what kind of consequences to give.’ So, truthfully, it is difficult to have turnover, specifically in the AVP office,” Hanson said.
How M-A can better retain administrators
To improve administrative retention, M-A and the District must implement better mentorship programs for new administrators and provide more spaces for them to share experiences and best practices.
For the past three years, the District has tried a program that pairs administrators with a coach to meet with and ask for guidance. While this attempt to support new administrators is a step in the right direction, Rivera-Rios said the resource hasn’t been particularly helpful due to her assigned mentor’s lack of relevant experience. Her mentor worked at a small elementary school and therefore didn’t have much helpful advice for a large, diverse high school like M-A.
The District should find mentors who have worked at M-A or one of its feeder schools to provide more useful guidance to M-A administrators.
After his 16-year IVP tenure, Lippi stayed at M-A as a math teacher for one year to mentor Losekoot, his successor. “It wasn’t that he needed a lot of help, but I wanted to be there and talk through situations with him,” Lippi said.
The District should also create more formal opportunities for administrators to discuss their work. “We meet monthly as AVPs, but, because the meetings were largely about admittedly important operational and procedural updates, there was no forum for us to just talk about how it’s going and how we’re doing, at least not in any structured way, which would be helpful,” Muys said.
More organized forums would not only be beneficial for individual administrators’ well-being but also for the group as a whole, helping them communicate and work better as a team.
“When I was a new principal, I had the opportunity to be part of the Stanford Principal Fellows program. We were a group of principals from across the Bay Area who met monthly to support one another and share best practices. That kind of network made a huge difference,” Rick-Kennel said.
If our educators, our teachers, our staff, and our administrators are happy, then our students are happy too.
Simone Rick-Kennel, TIDE Principal and former M-A Principal
Hiring administrators from within M-A’s staff may be another way to improve retention. When new administrators are already familiar with M-A, they only have to adjust to a new job, not a new environment.
“If you come from inside the school, there’s a level of comfort with the school and the staff. You’re probably somewhat committed to this community, and that might aid in retention and help with a sense of, ‘I’m going to work through this because this is my community,’” Losekoot said.
“I didn’t have to acclimate to the campus and figure out who’s who, what’s what, and where to go,” Rivera-Rios, who worked at M-A for over seven years before becoming an administrator, said. “It was nice that I just had to figure out how to do my role. When you have somebody coming from outside M-A, it’s different.”
Muys also proposed adjusting what is taught in administrative credential programs to reflect the real experiences administrators face, like managing teams of classified employees and handling searches.
“My credential program focused a lot on thinking about things through an equity lens and leadership as a concept. That’s all important, but there are some nuts and bolts that would have been helpful to have some practical experience with before I jumped in,” Muys said.
The District itself should also devote more time to preparing new administrators, as credential programs are broad and every school district is unique. District administrators attend a one-day meeting over the summer to review policies, but this isn’t sufficient to fully acclimate them to the intense environment of their job. Dedicating more time to understanding their daily roles could help administrators start with more confidence. While true experience can only come with time, in such an intense environment, increased onboarding is necessary to better transition new administrators into their roles.
“How do we as a culture, as a school, set up systems that don’t wear out our staff? What are the systems that allow someone to have a work-life balance? That’s probably something we can improve on,” Losekoot said.
Faced with abnormal amounts of conflict and a community with diverse needs, M-A administrators are in a uniquely stressful position that requires additional support. Our administrators deserve to work at a school where they feel adequately prepared for the challenges they face, and students and teachers deserve to go to a school where their leaders are set up to support them.
“If our educators, our teachers, our staff, and our administrators are happy, then our students are happy too,” Rick-Kennel said.
Celine Chien and Ben Siegel were the lead authors of this article.
A version of this article printed in The Mark included slightly inaccurate numbers due to erroneous data provided by the District. The numbers used in this version of the article are all correct.
What a well-written, thorough, and thoughtful article! Even after my 29 years of affiliation with M-A (working with administrators of many different stripes!), I gained new perspective reading your work. Thanks for the interviews/quotations and depth of analysis.