The Superintendent Who Listens, part four:
'Let's Do This Together'
Canada is flinging the doors open wide, and with Southern-style hospitality saying, Come on down. This is your district. Let’s do this together. Not only does Canada invite everybody to the table, he opens the linen closet for inspection.
"His approach is to never hide things from the public," says Saxton. "It’s always, How do we make sure people know this? How do we get this information out, even if it’s bad? To him, it would be far worse to be accused of hiding something than to accept responsibility for whatever mistake occurred."
Soon after taking his new job, Canada stumbled onto the district’s antiquated internal mail system. He wanted to send an all-staff memo. "Oh," he was told, "that’ll take two days. We deliver to half the sites on one day, the rest on the next." Canada was aghast.
When something important happened in the district, employees were getting the details on the 10 o’clock news or in the morning paper. "Some other organization is telling our people their version of what we’re doing," he notes. "I said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense, folks.’"
Canada quickly hired an executive communications director and a couple of support staff to revive the flagging public information office, which had shriveled from eight employees to one. A $200,000 contribution of cash and donated services from Portland General Electric is helping to pay for the newly fattened office, which has launched internal and external newsletters to ensure a regular flow of district news.
The teachers’ union is critical of the hire. In the view of Richard Garrett, President of the Portland Association of Teachers, the new communications director is just one more high-paid administrator in an overstuffed central office.
"We certainly recognize that the district has a great need to manage broad and complex issues," says Garrett. "But money spent on administrators doesn’t go to buy textbooks."
Canada staunchly defends the hire.
"If people don’t know what you’re doing — including your own people — you can’t expect to have support from the outside," he says. "You leave yourself wide open for speculation. You’re always chasing rumors rather than getting out the information that you want people to respond to."
Canada’s pledge to share complete and accurate information is beginning to restore the public’s trust in the district, observers say. In the old days, critics complained about the central office issuing squishy numbers that were "always changing," Saxton reports. Garrett describes the superintendent’s office under Canada’s predecessor Jack Bierwirth as "herky-jerky" — jumping from one position to another.
"The school district had lost its credibility with a variety of audiences — with the legislature that controls our funding; with the city and county we need as partners; with the business community that had really turned its back to a large degree because it didn’t believe the district’s numbers," says Saxton, who’s also on the board of the Portland Chamber of Commerce. "The relationship with the business community is just 100 percent better."
Canada’s hiring of several other key administrators — "talented folks in terms of financial credibility with business and the legislature" — is adding to the impression of renewed district competence, says Duncan Wyse of the Oregon Business Council. But it’s Canada’s unique blend of heartwarming personality and hardheaded management that has perhaps given the biggest boost to the district’s image.
"The credibility of the district is largely tied to the personal credibility of the superintendent," Saxton asserts. "I think Ben has done a great job with that. People believe he’s sincere and honest and has personal values they like. But he has a pretty tough side to him when it comes to expecting performance from staff. We talked about, ‘What do you do with sloppy numbers?’ He said, ‘You don’t accept them, that’s what you do.’"
People who work with him describe him as open but shrewd, friendly but exacting, warm but firm. "He’s a taskmaster," one staff member confides. Still, he’s hardest on himself. If his staff puts in 60 hours a week to get the job done, he puts in 80.
"The truth is, he’s trying to do about twice as much as any human being can do," says Saxton. "I get e-mails from him at one in the morning. I’ve told him, ‘I’m going to fire you if you don’t stop sending e-mails at one in the morning. Go to bed!’ He’s just passionate about his job."
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