Superintendents: Navigating the Business of Education

Dr. Pam Homan talks about about the business of education and the role Superintendents play integrating the private sector into a districts long term plans.

Super-intendents, Episode 2: Dr. Pam Homan on Navigating the Business of EducationPlay: Super-intendents, Episode 2: Dr. Pam Homan on Navigating the Business of Education0:00

A native of Sioux Falls, Homan graduated from Augustana University where she double-majored in elementary and special education. She holds a master’s degree in education from Augustana and a doctorate in education from the University of South Dakota.

From 2004 to 2015, Homan served as superintendent of the Sioux Falls School District. There, she was responsible for more than 25,000 students at 23 elementary schools, five middle schools, three traditional high schools, an alternative high school, a project-based learning high school, a career and technical education academy and a post-secondary technical institute.

Earlier this year Homan was named the Executive Director of the New Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Augustana University.

About this episode

Dr. Pam Homan led the Sioux Falls School District in South Dakota for eleven years, and this conversation is essentially a case study in how a public school system learned to work with the businesses, hospitals and agencies around it. It is a thoughtful account of partnership as a necessity rather than a slogan, and of the persuasion that partnership demands.

The end of the district as an island

Homan describes the district she took over in 2004 as largely self-contained: students arrived, were taught and went home, with few outside partners involved. That model did not survive the changes that followed, including rising poverty, more students with emotional and behavioral needs, and a far more diverse student body. Her conclusion was that schools could only keep their focus on teaching if they brought in partners with expertise the district did not have.

Health care is her clearest example. Sioux Falls had plenty of it, yet many children could not reach it. A conversation with the mayor grew into school-based health centers inside district buildings, assembled from city support, federal funds, grants and local providers. Each later partnership, she explains, followed the same pattern: start from a need the district had documented, avoid duplicating what others already did, and make every dollar go further.

Winning over the skeptics

A recurring theme is perception. Because nearly everyone went to school, Homan observes, many people assume schools still work the way they remember, and their impressions become their reality. She saw herself as the person who had to close that gap, explaining how much of what society once handled, from mental health care to basic health services, now passes through schools. With business audiences she often turned the question around, asking how they would run their own organizations, while reminding them that a district is accountable for public money. She is honest that this work never finished: each group that came around was followed by another still to be convinced.

Partnerships that pay their way

The test Homan applied to every public-private arrangement was cost: a partner had to deliver a service for no more than the district would have spent providing it alone. She gives credit to partners who designed models that worked for both sides, and describes careful conversations with the teachers’ association to make clear that a partner was filling a gap the district could not afford, not replacing its staff.

Money, planning and public trust

The conversation also touches a frustration familiar to many district leaders: reserves set aside under a long-range plan are criticized as unspent money, and school funds can be invested only in the most cautious ways. Grants help, Homan notes, but often bind each dollar to narrow uses. Her response was visibility and transparency. She reached residents directly through social media and personal contact so they could judge the district on facts rather than headlines. During one period of financial strain, she asked the Chamber of Commerce to assemble the community’s leading chief financial officers, opened the district’s books to them, and let them report what they found to their own networks. She notes that across her tenure the district used South Dakota’s opt-out, which lets a district seek local funding above the state level, without the decision ever being forced to a public vote.

What the job now requires

Homan’s portrait of today’s superintendent is closer to a chief executive than a head teacher: someone with genuine business sense, skilled at negotiation and mediation, able to map a community’s centers of influence, and, above all, attuned to the politics of people.

Her next chapter

The episode ends with Homan’s move to Augustana University’s new Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where her role is to build partnerships that turn the region’s resources into opportunities for students and graduates. One early effort, with philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, uses a philanthropy institute to connect nonprofits and businesses across the region with the funders their causes need.

The full conversation is in the player above, and every episode of the series is on the Super-intendents hub.

Related: The Path to Superintendent

More on Super-intendents