Thomas J. Geismar, who began work as Exeter-West Greenwich superintendent last January, visits the high school.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

There are times when Kenneth Sheehan feels overwhelmed.

In his first six months on the job, West Warwick’s new superintendent has faced disgruntled teachers, pressure to improve student scores and reams of paperwork. And he’s barely unpacked his boxes.

He’s not the only one feeling that way. Most of Rhode Island’s 35 school superintendents are experiencing the demands of being new.

Almost two-thirds of them have held their current jobs less than three years; 80 percent have been at the top for less than five.

The massive turnover comes as school districts face the most serious financial problems in recent memory and the expectation that students do better than they’ve ever done before.

“It’s tremendously traumatic for a school district to change superintendents every three or four years, because basically the district has to re-figure out who this new person is and whether they share the vision of the prior person, which is usually unlikely,” says John L. Pini, director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association and a former Chariho superintendent.

Of the six superintendents who came on board this school year, Georgia Fortunato, in Lincoln, and Sheehan are first-timers, but are at least familiar with Rhode Island’s idiosyncrasies. The other four have held the position in other states and are adjusting to Rhode Island, an experience one new superintendent compares to “moving to another country.”

Amid so many new faces, Coventry’s Kenneth R. DiPietro jokes that after five years on the job, he’s practically a veteran.

“I can’t even imagine being brand-new right now,” he says.

The situation in Rhode Island mirrors a national trend: the job of school superintendent is getting harder, and as it does leaders are coming on board later in their careers and moving on or out quickly. Despite healthy salaries — $100,000 or more for most — a lot of them tire of the battles and give up.

Paul Lescault has been superintendent in Scituate since l994, making him the longest-serving superintendent in a single district.

“Continuity or a sense of history is very important to achieving success,” he says. “You are putting structures and systems in place that are going to sometimes take five or six years to start seeing good results, so if you’re changing leaders every three or four years, you won’t see results you would if you stayed with the program.”

Just three of the state’s superintendents have been in their current job for a decade or more.

Katherine E. Sipala is Narragansett’s sixth superintendent in four years.

Now in her second year, Sipala gives the job high marks and promises she’s not going anywhere else anytime soon because finding “the right fit” between a district and a top administrator is difficult.

A generation ago, superintendents, bolstered with ever-increasing federal and state dollars, could concentrate on ways to raise the quality of the district’s offerings, adding new programs, hiring more staff, even decreasing class size. Now they find themselves with shrinking resources, a situation that forces them to reduce staff, eliminate programs, and even close schools. When teachers and parents object to the cuts, it’s the superintendent they point fingers at; when test scores falter, superintendents must answer to school committees, parents and the state; and if the union is angered about a change in working conditions, it’s the superintendent who gets the “no-confidence” vote.

And, as Providence Supt. Donnie Evans learned during last month’s snowstorm, when children are stranded on buses late into the night, taxpayers and parents think the superintendent should be on the scene trying to resolve the crisis.

“Superintendents can be almost like a one-man band,” said Mary Canole, a former Newport superintendent who now works at the state’s Department of Education. “I think that takes a physical toll on your life.”

It can also lead to burnout.

Even for those who can handle the daily demands, the lack of job security is a source of anxiety.

Although they have individual contracts, superintendents are appointed by school committees whose members can change every two years. New members often bring new notions of what they want to see in the district’s leadership. In Woonsocket, a newly seated school board in 2005 didn’t see eye to eye with then-Supt. Anthony D’Acchioli. They released him from his contract and showed him the door.

In Providence, where the mayor and School Board appoint the superintendent, Evans’ fate remains uncertain. Mayor David N. Cicilline, in the wake of a council attempt to oust Evans in his third year, called for the council to hold off until the School Board has a chance to evaluate his overall performance and decide whether to renew his contract.

Some school leaders manage to survive the turbulence, but the urge to get out or retire can be strong, particularly because superintendents tend to be older these days, says Pini of the state superintendents association.

Nationwide the average age is 54.5 years, according to a new report by the American Association of School Administrators, a national organization that follows trends in the field. In Rhode Island, the average age of superintendents is even higher, 57.

The national superintendents report suggests that job vacancies draw far fewer applicants than a decade or more ago. That’s certainly true in Rhode Island. Vacancies in the 1990s drew pools of 20 or more applicants. Yet when Warwick — the state’s second-largest district and a high paying one — advertised for a new superintendent last spring, just eight candidates applied. The school board’s choice, Peter P. Horoschak, stands out for two reasons: he’s 66 years old and, unlike most of Rhode Island’s school chiefs, he’s had tons of experience. He’s held the job of superintendent in six districts in five other states. Not surprisingly, he told the board he intended to retire in Rhode Island.

With so many challenges facing them in the superintendent’s office, why would popular educators like Sheehan and Sipala even want to make the leap to the top office?

They cite career advancement and new challenges.

“When I was a teacher, I knew every day that I positively impacted those kids. When I chose to become a building administrator, my mindset was, ‘I could change education in a positive way for an entire school.’ And now going from a building administrator to a superintendent, I’m hoping that I can change education in a positive way for an entire district,” Sheehan says.

Sipala agrees that the appeal of “the next challenge” is important to job satisfaction.

Yet, at the head of the bureaucracy, they both reach back to what attracted them to the enterprise: educating children.

Sheehan makes a point of visiting every school in his district at least twice a week. Sipala has at points connected with youngsters by playing piano as the accompanist for the student chorus at Narragansett Elementary School.

There is another upside to becoming a superintendent: they’re paid well. Very well. Nationally the average base salary for a superintendent is $117,000, according to the American Association of School Administrators report.

Here in Rhode Island, full-time superintendents are paid more than $100,000, with seven making at least $140,000. On top of that, buyback options for unused sick leave and vacation and other perks, from health insurance to conference fees, can push compensation packages thousands of dollars higher. In most communities, the school superintendent is paid significantly more than the mayor, the town manager or almost any other town official.

Sheehan and several of his counterparts reject the suggestion that their salaries are excessive, noting that chief executives in the corporate world who run multimillion-dollar enterprises with hundreds of employees are paid much more.

“The salary does not come close to what the responsibility factor is,” Sheehan says. Twelve-hour days, disgruntled teachers and more than 500 emails a week are just the start of what he faces. Yet his 25-year-old daughter, working in finance, will make more this year than he will, he says.

Mary Canole remembers how difficult it is to be new and at the helm of a school district. Several years ago, while still superintendent in Newport, she proposed that the state superintendents association sponsor a series of training workshops to support newcomers.

When she left Newport to join the state Department of Education, she brought her idea with her. In the last school year, the superintendents group, Johnson & Wales University and the state unveiled the “leading and learning network,” a workshop series which Coventry’s DiPietro jokingly calls, “How to be a Superintendent 101.”

Canole’s idea is to give leaders with less than three years’ experience a crash course in the critical aspects of the superintendent’s job. “It focuses on the superintendent’s key charge: to improve teaching and learning in schools. Yes, you still have to do the mechanics of busing and labor and budgets, but your number-one focus has to be on students.”

More than that, it gives the newcomers a chance to network and a place to vent. Since the program started in 2006, more than half of the state’s superintendents have participated.

“Superintendents basically have to be the support and the lifeline for everyone in their district, yet nobody is really there to support them,” Canole said. That’s where the seminars come in.

“As a superintendent, you always have to be the courageous one saying ‘We can do this and this is how we’ll get there,’ even if at the same time you’re saying, ‘How in God’s name will I pull this off?’ That’s the beauty of this network; it offers a chance to collaborate.”

The program helped Sipala define her long-term vision for Narragansett schools. “It was heady stuff,” she recalls. “I’ll be honest, in January and February, I struggled with ‘What’s my theory of action?’ I couldn’t define it and that was hard. But by July, I’d developed a theory that I brought back to my faculty and administrators and said ‘This is who I am and what I believe will affect student achievement in our district.’ ”

In retrospect, Canole says, had there been such a program when she was a superintendent she might have realized that she wasn’t the only one feeling pressure.

“Expectations for superintendents are very, very high, and I think if I knew then what I know now about how difficult superintendents are finding it in other districts, perhaps I would have stayed on,” she said.

The superintendents association says it will continue to support Rhode Island’s newer superintendents as long as the turnover remains high.

Executive director Pini acknowledges that there is no substitute for experience. As the demands of the superintendent’s job change with each new reform and every new budget season, it’s hard to stay current on how best to train all these newcomers.

“I think the job of superintendent is going to continue to evolve until some stability comes to education, particularly to the financial aspect of it,” Pini says.

“When that will happen, I just don’t know.”

cneedham@projo.com