Harriet Alverez Case Study

Harriet Alverez is experiencing a rough start in her new role as Assistant Superintendent of Management Services in the Wildwood Unified School District. What seemed like a great opportunity to work in both the education and business realms, has turned out to be considerably more challenging than she had expected. There are several causes of her unforeseen stress including Congress’ passage of No Child Left Behind, an inflexible and opinionated leadership cabinet, limited to no guidance, and her own inexperience. Each of these has led to a crucial juncture for Harriet in her first year in her new role.
With the passage of No Child Left Behind the Wildwood School District assumed that an increased flow of federal funding would follow. The school district, under Harriet’s predecessor, estimated the new federal funding to be near $1,000,000 dollars. While they correctly estimated the amount of money, what they did not expect was that some of the money would be earmarked for specific kinds of spending. A sizeable chunk of that $1,000,000 had to use for afterschool programs, or summer tutoring. The school district had already used this money to hire in school coaches for the school year, and their salaries were to be paid with the money the district now had to spend on supportive services. This has led Harriet to her first major crisis as

She is scolded as if she had been deceptive. She is told statistics about the benefits of coaching, which she later deems unfounded. She is enlightened about the collective opinion of the school board not to use reserve funding for coach salaries and given advice to spend the money for coaches anyway, and file suit against the federal government. Combine all this with Harriet’s being unprepared for the level of resistance, and candor and you have the circumstances surrounding Harriet’s