Building Budgets and Trust through Superintendent Leadership

In this study, we surveyed school district superintendents in a southeastern state about their budget-building strategies. The majority of responding superintendents had worked with their most senior principals and business managers for less than three years. Patterns of variance along the openness of budget-building processes, information management, and school settings had no relationship to superintendent rate of rise to authority, career path, or cohesiveness of staff. There was no relationship found between professional preparation and budget-building processes. Cohesiveness of staff had a negative and weak relationship with information management but the openness of processes had a significantly positive relationship to information management. The responding superintendents relied heavily on their on-the-job training and currently operate much differently than when they started their superintendency. We discuss these outcomes with regard to professional preparation programs and superintendent professional development activities.