Principals Need Power to Keep People Safe

When principal's power is taken away by districts or state-level policymakers, bad things happen.

See, one of the things leaders need to be prepared for is exercising power to protect others, right?

If you are in an organizational context, like if you're responsible for adults and children in a school during the school day, You need to be ready and able to exercise power to protect them.

And that includes power over the physical environment, right?

Like if somebody shows up on campus with a weapon, that means calling the police most likely.

If that means a student is tearing up a classroom, that means probably intervening physically so that that student doesn't get hurt and nobody else gets hurt.

There are a lot of situations that require us to exercise power in ways that make us uncomfortable, that are not fun.

Like if you've ever had to exclude a parent from campus because of inappropriate behavior, if you've ever had to suspend a child from school, like all of these are unpleasant things, but they're necessary for keeping people safe.

And if we're going to say to our students and to our staff, you have to come here every day.

We have to guarantee their safety.

And of course, we can't predict everything that's going to happen.

So we guarantee that safety procedurally, which I've talked about in some recent videos.

We put systems in place to ensure that other people cannot use power against the people who are under our responsibility with impunity, right?

We're ready to do something if someone becomes a threat, if someone dies.

is doing something that is harming kids.

And that includes staff members, right?

Like if you have a staff member who is committing crimes against children, if you have someone who is an abuser, you have to be ready to use the human resources processes, to use law enforcement, to exercise power to address that situation.

Because if we are not ready to do that, schools will become a target for people who want to hurt other people, right?

And this is not a surprise.

I could give you lots of examples.

You can think of lots of examples of cases where people get hurt at school because someone is able to get away with using power inappropriately.

And I think for policymakers, the thing they have to realize and the thing they have to stop doing is that like when you take away principal's power, you make school impossible, right?

Principals need the power to protect other people.

They need the power to exclude people from campus.

They need the power to enforce the law, perhaps with the help of law enforcement.

They need the power to protect other people.

And for various reasons, I think that power is being eroded.

That power is being taken away.

Principles are being made to feel bad for exercising that power in appropriate and necessary ways.

And I think we've just got to recognize the course that we're on with eroding that power and taking that power away.

And that's not to say that every principle ever has always used their power appropriately.

Certainly, I'm sure you've heard of cases where things have not been appropriate and principles have needed to use their power differently.

But just because there are some bad examples, just because there are some incidents that have occurred that make us cautious does not mean we need to swing the pendulum in the complete opposite direction and completely take away all principal power.

Because if we want to have schools, if we want to have staff, if we want to have students feel safe, if we want learning to take place, principals have to be able to exercise power that cannot just be taken away by district officials or by state-level policymakers.

Let me know what you think.