David McDeavitt starts each morning at 4:30 a.m. to get ahead of a day full of meetings. By 7 a.m., he’s in the office, where he can stay as late as 10 or 11 p.m.

The Allegheny-Clarion Valley School District superintendent considers himself a liaison between the school district and the community whose responsibilities include overseeing day-to-day operations, communicating information on personnel and budgeting to the school board and ensuring the safety and security of students.

“If I’m not sleeping, I’m working,” said McDeavitt, who has held the position for 12 years.

The challenges faced by McDeavitt are shared between many public district superintendents across Pennsylvania, where a study showed that 230 of the 500 public school districts saw at least one change of superintendent between 2013 and 2021.

Nationally, the average tenure of superintendents is an estimated at three to six years, according to a 2022 study by the Pennsylvania Clearinghouse for Education Research, but in the nine school districts located, at least partially, within Butler County, most of the current superintendents have outlasted the national trends.

Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, said that in spite of long days and “low lows,” the job also comes with “high highs” that are not felt completely in other school district roles. The high highs, he said, make the job.

“Once in a while there are days I wake up and ask, ‘Why do I do this?’” White said. “There are days I think, ‘I get to make a kid's life better.’”

For a majority of this school year, Eric Ritzert has been occupied by a building project which is also leading up to the closure of an elementary school, all the while, being a liaison between the family of a hospitalized student and the community he lives in.

It’s hard to count the number of hours he works a week, or even a day, as superintendent of Karns City Area School District, because as the chief official of the district, he could be contacted at any time about almost anything, he said. Despite the constant demands of the job, Ritzert is the longest-serving school district superintendent in Butler County, with 13 years in the role and counting.

I didn’t understand fully the requirements of the position until I inherited it,” Ritzert said. “I have a lot of meetings, some in person, some virtual. There’s a lot of meetings externally … We’re sort of the ambassador of a school system.”

Mark Gross, who has served as Mars Area School District’s superintendent for over four years, said the job is akin to being on an island.

“You’re reporting to many individuals,” he said. “In some ways, the job is to make sure you create as many bridges as possible for parents, board members, staff members, community members and students.”

“There’s no such thing as a routine,” he said.

Gross said most of his day is spent problem-solving. Between meetings, that can look like anything from addressing a maintenance repair issue to instructional issue to a discipline issue or a policy issue.

“Every day is an adventure,” Gross said.

“You don’t know which bridge you’re going to cross every day,” he said. “You could find yourself in the student realm, the administrative realm, the legal realm.”

Superintendents in Butler County are the head of up to 900 employees and several thousand students. Just communicating with that number of people takes up space in a superintendent’s day.

The sheer size of the Seneca Valley School District has changed superintendent Tracy Vitale’s daily job from being able to work directly with teachers and their students to being more involved with capital projects and development initiatives. She said she needs to be planning for as many as 20 years into the future so the district’s facilities and technology can stay modern to best educate students.

“My first several years as superintendent, I had more time to observe classrooms, sit in on professional development activities like new teacher induction and curriculum meetings,” Vitale said.

Vitale, who has been superintendent of Seneca Valley School District for 12 years, also said a former school board president described her job as chief ambassador for the school district. While she is the chief administrator of Seneca Valley, Vitale carries out the instructions from the school board.

“It is also a large portion of my job to be advocating and making sure that I am at the table with our community leaders in our township, municipalities and state-level offices,” Vitale said. “Often, I see myself still as a teacher, but now more about educating our taxpayers or state-level leaders about what we are doing and why.”

David Foley, superintendent of Knoch School District, said the duties of a superintendent can’t really be summed up in a list, because he can be asked to do something specific by any number of people.

“I'll get a call after hours from construction that needs a car moved,” he said. “There are board meetings, committee meetings going on. Sometimes that makes it difficult to get to sporting events. There is constant involvement to this job.”

Those who may communicate most often with the superintendent are members of the administrative team.

“There's about 15 people on our core group. Probably at least 10 have been here as long as me, or longer,” Foley said of Knoch. “It does help tremendously that you have people who understand parents and are familiar with the culture of the entire organization.”

Many members of his administrative team have been with Knoch at least as long as him. That kind of longevity helps keep operations smooth, he said.

The size of the administrative team depends on the size of the school. A district like Seneca Valley might have more than a dozen administrative positions, but the team at Karns City Area is smaller.

“My central office is comprised of, administratively, myself and the business director, and we have an assistant business director, so three people,” Ritzert said.

McDeavitt, who said he is working with the third school board in his tenure, cited open communication and collaboration between the superintendent and school board as essential, especially in navigating financial decisions and school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We went through the COVID situation, and it was difficult for the community. It was difficult for the school district, as well as the local officials,” he said. “And we worked together on keeping the school open.

“If you didn't have that open communication, I think those types of decisions, or even just financial decisions, which we're all faced with right now, would be even more challenging.”

In Pennsylvania, Gross said, superintendents work in a team of 10.

“You have nine board members and a superintendent and you have to work in a manner that, despite the differences, there’s enough mutual respect among all parties to build consensus,” Gross said. “That can become a problem in some districts, but a highly effective school district has a board and a superintendent that truly values that team of 10 approach.”

White said he can make recommendations to the school board based on the information and resources Butler school district has available, but not everything he and the school board would like to see happen in the district is possible, often because of budget.

“The biggest challenge is seeing the need and trying to distribute resources the best we can knowing we don't have the resources to do everything we need to do,” White said. “You're making decisions on what to support and what not to support. It's a balancing act.”

He explained that he must always be looking ahead and always be ready for change, noting that type of staff employed by a school district has also evolved in the years, even in just his time as superintendent.

He pointed out that the Butler Area district had no therapists until 2019. It all comes down to what students need, White said, and the provisions provided by a school has changed because of those needs.

“In 2018, we had zero therapists; 2019, we had one; now in 2024, we have eight,” White said. “I think that we're trying to support families more than we ever had before. Sometimes it's behavioral, sometimes it's academic support.”

Further, the job comes with an “emotional component,” White said, which is responsible for the best and worst work days. While the highs are high, the lows are unpredictable.

“There are low lows because, at the end of the day, you are the superintendent. Sometimes there are things that you don't have control over,” White said.

Exterior factors can have a big effect on the community’s school district, especially when unexpected events hit a school community. Ritzert said the injury of football player Mason Martin in September has affected his district.

“I go to many sporting events, and you never think about something going wrong like that,” Ritzert said. “Planning for something like that and trying to figure out how to appropriately handle that.”

He’s aimed to be sensitive to the family’s needs while encouraging the community as it has rallied behind the Martin family.

McDeavitt spoke about how his district lost Holly Irwin, a nurse who had worked for A-C Valley for 25 years, to cancer.

“Anytime that you lose a student or a staff member is incredibly difficult to get through,” he said. “To lose somebody is by far the most difficult part of the job.”

It’s those moments when planning isn’t possible.

“No matter how much you prepare and plan for, you don’t know what it’s like until you’re in the role,” Ritzert said.

McDeavitt said the COVID-19 pandemic may have been a contributing factor to a superintendent shortage in some areas, and noted that school funding is a stressor, especially for smaller, rural districts that are fronting the costs of cyber charter schooling, which he said can cost the district up to $1 million annually.

“Bills go up every year,” he said. “And money from the state is stagnant.”

Additionally, McDeavitt said A-C Valley has seen a declining student population.

“As people retire and move on, we just have not been replacing positions,” he said. “So we haven't furloughed anybody. But, you know, our workforce continues to decline. And that's very difficult on the school board members. It’s difficult on the current employees, because everybody's doing more with less right now.”

Despite the challenges, McDeavitt said he does not see himself working a different job, and said he plans to stay in the district until he retires.

“A lot of people, I feel, get into the superintendent position at the end of their career,” he said. “Myself, I became superintendent in 2012. And I was 39 years old.”

Foley echoed these sentiments. Although the work is demanding and requires constant attention, Foley said he still enjoys many aspects of being a school district superintendent.

The rush of being constantly busy is something Foley said he will likely miss when he eventually retires.

“It's rewarding that I have my hands in all those things, and I believe I provide leadership to all those things going on,” Foley said. “I'm going to retire at some point, but I think I'm going to miss the busyness of the job.”