3leadership.qxd 9/7/2004 2:03 pm page 1 an education week ... · an education week special report...

AN EDUCATION WEEK SPECIAL REPORT ON PRINCIPALS /SUPPLEMENT TO THE SEPTEMBER 15, 2004, ISSUE

3leadership.qxd 9/7/2004 2:03 PM

Kelly Griffith’s job description is mostnotable for what it doesn’t include.x

The principal at Easton Elemen-tary School in Easton, Md., doesn’thandle maintenance. She doesn’t

help arrange field trips. She doesn’t oversee herbuilding’s cafeteria workers. Nor does she super-vise the buses before and after school.

Instead, she spends her time in classrooms, ob-serving educators and showing them new meth-ods of instruction. She analyzes test scores. Sheplans professional-development activities for herteachers aimed at boosting student achievement.

Griffith can focus on teaching and learning be-cause school leaders in her district made a con-scious effort to let principals do so.Two years ago,the 4,500-student Talbot County system put“school managers” in its buildings to free princi-pals of administrative duties and let them con-centrate on raising student performance.

“It really has given me more of a hands-on ap-proach to being an instructional leader,” says Grif-fith, who’s been a principal for 13 years. Beforeher building got a school manager, she says, “youwere putting your fingers in the holes in the dike.”

After years of hearing that a principal’s mainjob should be to raise the quality of instruction,districts and states are experimenting with waysto make that ideal a reality. New policies areemerging to give principals more of the time,training, and tools to become leaders of school im-provement, rather than managers of operations.

Like Talbot County, some school systems arelightening the load for principals, particularlywhen it comes to noninstructional matters. Oth-ers are grounding the preparation of new ad-ministrators more in the real work of improvingschool performance, as in Massachusetts, wherestate policymakers have empowered districts torun their own licensing programs for principals.

There’s also renewed talk of giving buildingleaders more decisionmaking authority. Anagreement with the teachers’ union in Mem-phis, Tenn., for example, will give principals inlow-performing schools more flexibility on per-sonnel issues. And across the country, evalua-tion systems and professional-development ef-forts for administrators are placing a greaterpremium on raising student achievement.

“There really is a growing consensus aboutwhat the center of education administration issupposed to be about,” says Joseph F. Murphy,

an expert on educational leadership at Vander-bilt University. “Ten years ago, even seven yearsago, I wouldn’t have said that.”

To be sure, such changes are hardly thenorm. Surveys suggest that many of the na-tion’s 84,000 public school principals remainlargely caught up in the “administrivia” of thejob, lacking the authority and wherewithal tocarry out significant changes in their schools.

But the press to re-engineer the work ofprincipals has never been stronger. Under thefederal No Child Left Behind Act, school lead-ers are judged on their ability to raise testscores for all groups of students. Some of thelaw’s stiffest sanctions for low-performingschools kick in this year.

Marc S. Tucker, the president of the NationalCenter on Education and the Economy, a Wash-ington-based policy group that runs a trainingprogram for principals, says the federal law un-derscores a sea change in the expectations foradministrators. No longer is it enough for schoolleaders to keep things running smoothly.

“For the first time in the history of Americaneducation, with the advent of the accountabilitymovement, bad things happen to school leaders

who don’t improve student performance, andgood things happen to those who do,” he says.

Principals don’t teach students, butthey do affect student achievement.Kenneth Leithwood, a professor ofeducational leadership and policy atthe University of Toronto who co-

wrote a new review of research on leadership ef-fectiveness, says leadership characteristics arethe second-strongest predictor of a school’s ef-fect on student results. Only classroom factors,such as teacher quality, are stronger.

“It’s not that those in leadership roles arehaving a dramatic direct influence,” says Leith-wood. “But those things that do have a direct in-fluence are quite substantially affected by whatpeople in leadership do.”

Another recent research summary by Mid-

BY JEFF ARCHER

TACKLING ANIMPOSSIBLE JOB

Kelly Griffith, the principal at Easton Elementary School in Easton, Md., works with 2nd graderJazmyne Gonzage-Kreitzer. Griffith’s job is structured so that she has plenty of time in classrooms.

LEADING FOR LEARNING

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Cover: Fredi Buffmire, the principal of MendozaElementary School in Mesa, Ariz., shares a moment during a school celebration with 1st grader Afrique Johnson. Credit: Tom Story

SEPTEMBER 15, 2004 /EDUCATION WEEK S3

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Continent Research for Education andLearning shows how good principals leavetheir mark. Based in Aurora, Colo., McRELanalyzed 70 studies and identified the mostcritical parts of a principal’s job. Amongthem: fostering shared beliefs, monitoringthe effectiveness of school practices, and in-volving teachers in implementing policy.

The bad news is that many principalshave little opportunity to perform those func-tions. Their days are consumed with studentdiscipline, parent complaints, maintenanceproblems, and paperwork. A 1998 poll by theNational Association of Elementary SchoolPrincipals showed that 72 percent of build-ing leaders nationwide agreed that “frag-mentation of my time” was a major concern.

Such frustrations are why the TalbotCounty system, located on the easternshore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland,created its “school manager” position in2002. Eight of its nine schools now havesuch managers, who handle virtually all oftheir buildings’ noninstructional adminis-trative tasks. They order supplies and re-pairs, supervise the food service and cus-todial workers, and track staff attendance.

Griffith, the principal at Easton Elemen-tary, says the change has been a godsend.Her school serves 610 pupils in grades 2-5 ona campus that includes a separate school forprekindergarten through 1st grade.The ben-efits of the managerial position were clearlast year, when a new roof at the school keptleaking—a problem that, in the old days,Griffith would have had to resolve herself.

Not only is Griffith able to spend moretime modeling instruction for her teachers,but she also can cover their classes herselfso the teachers can observe colleagueselsewhere in the building. Districtwide,the number of teacher observations byprincipals has tripled since the schools gottheir managers, district officials say.

“I’m in the classrooms every day,” saysGriffith.

Other districts have tried similar stepsto make principals’ jobs more doable. Forthe past four years, the 4,900-studentMansfield, Mass., public schools have hadtwo principals at each elementary school.In California, the 97,000-student LongBeach Unified uses pairs of “co-principals”at its six regular high schools.

The tactic isn’t without challenges. Tal-bot County lost two of its school managersthe first year of the system, when leadersdiscovered that the intense multi-taskingdemanded of the position requires a spe-cial temperament. Also, district leaderssay, some principals were so used to actingas managers that they found it hard toshed their administrative roles.

“There are some principals that wouldnot benefit from having a school manager,”says Griffith. “They are very comfortablebeing a school manager themselves.”

Indeed, many of today’s principals feelill-prepared for the role of instruc-tional leader. They do know instruc-tion: More than 99 percent of themare former teachers. But a common

complaint is that traditional administrator-preparation programs don’t focus on how tocarry out the kind of organizational change

that’s needed to significantly improve aschool’s performance.

Frederick M. Hess, an education expert atthe American Enterprise Institute in Wash-ington, has surveyed the course content ofuniversity-based preparation programs, andhe’s been struck, he says, by their emphasison “what principals are allowed.”They stressthe mechanics of school law, finance, andteacher evaluation, but not how to restruc-ture academic programs, he says.

“They’re being trained to nibble aroundthe edges,” he contends.

Hess’ answer is to infuse the professionwith new blood. He argues that statesshould pare back licensure rules to allowleaders from fields other than teaching toserve as principals, as Florida and Michi-gan have done. Other experts counter that

some exposure to teaching, while not suffi-cient, is nonetheless critical for anyonecharged with improving instruction.

Regardless, there’s little disagreement inthe field that administrator preparation inthe United States needs an overhaul. SaysTucker of the National Center on Educationand the Economy: “The quality of leadershipand management training in our schools ofeducation is, on the whole, terrible.”

Some districts are taking matters intotheir own hands. Last year, the 60,000-student Boston public schools launchedan initiative that trains principal-candi-dates in one-year “residencies,” duringwhich participants work as administra-tors under the tutelage of practicingschool leaders in the city. The programgraduated its first class of 10 “Bostonprincipal fellows” this summer.

One of them is Oscar Santos, who spenthis residency at Irving Middle School,which serves a diverse student enrollmentin the southwest part of the city. Whilethere, he helped disaggregate student testscores for staff members working on theschool’s improvement plan. He also orga-nized a Saturday mathematics camp tooffer extra help for struggling students.

“I was fully involved in the changeprocess,” says Santos, 32, who has since be-come the headmaster—as principals inBoston are called—at a district high school.

A key objective of the fellowship programis to produce principals who understandBoston’s own brand of school improvement.

Fellows take part in seminars that teachsuch skills as how to use the district’s data-management system. With funding fromthe Los Angeles-based Broad Foundationand a federal grant, Boston pays fullsalaries to the trainees during the year.

Other district-led principal-training pro-grams have sprung up recently in Los An-geles and Springfield, Mass. New Leadersfor New Schools, a 3-year-old nonprofitgroup that trains aspiring principalsthrough a one-year residency, has con-tracts with the school districts in Chicago,the District of Columbia, Memphis, and itsheadquarters of New York City.

Meanwhile, some states are proddinguniversities to change how they train schoolleaders. Louisiana’s administrator-prepa-ration programs have until next July toredesign themselves or face closure. Stateofficials there have required that the pro-grams strengthen candidates’ field experi-ence by forming closer ties with districts. Asimilar push is under way in Iowa.

Elsewhere, there’s been less progress.The Southern Regional Education Board,an Atlanta-based policy group, recentlysurveyed 126 higher education institu-tions that prepare administrators, and itfound them lacking in offering practicalexperience. Fewer than one-quarter haveparticipants lead activities aimed at im-proving instruction. Shadowing experi-enced principals is more often the norm.

“What colleges tell us is that when thestate requires something different, theywill do differently,” says Betty Fry, who di-rects an SREB project that advises univer-sities on the redesign of their educationalleadership programs. “But as long asthey’re able to get principals licensed andget them jobs, there’s not much real com-pelling reason for them to do differently.”

Funding for the project comes from theNew York City-based Wallace Foundation.

Preservice training programscan’t take all the blame for theway many principals go abouttheir work. For most of thepast century, building adminis-

trators have been hired, rewarded, andpromoted based on considerations otherthan their ability to raise the level of in-struction in their schools.

“A lot of what a principal is, is whattheir school board wants them to be,” saysCarole Kennedy, a principal-in-residenceat the National Board for ProfessionalTeaching Standards, a private group basedin Arlington, Va., that offers a process forrecognizing highly skilled teachers. “Ifthey’re satisfied with management, that’swhat they’ll get.”

Gradually, though, principals are beingheld more accountable for students’ learning.In a national survey last year by PublicAgenda, a New York City-based pollinggroup, 29 percent of principals said theywere much more likely than in the past to bereassigned because of student performance.And almost twice as many, 57 percent, saidthey were evaluated based on “their abilityto judge and improve teacher quality.”

As one example of what states are doingto alter principals’ behavior, Delaware is now

Principals have beenhired, rewarded, andpromoted based onconsiderations otherthan their ability toimprove instruction.But that is changing.


S4 EDUCATION WEEK /SEPTEMBER 15, 2004


pilot-testing what state policymakers saywill become a mandatory, statewide evalua-tion system for school administrators. Whilerequiring principals to show that they’vemastered the state’s standards for educa-tional leadership, the plan also demands evi-dence of improved student performance.

Kennedy cites the 140,000-student SanDiego school system as a district that haslargely transformed its expectations forschool-level administrators. There, special-ists in instruction from the central officeregularly take principals on “walk-throughs” in their own buildings to showthem how to identify effective teaching.

“If you don’t know how to analyze in-struction in pretty sophisticated ways,then I don’t believe you can plan forchange in a school,” says Ann Van Sickle,who directs the district’s Leadership Acad-emy, which provides training to aspiringand current principals.

Of course, principals can’t change theirschools if they’re not allowed to, and manybuilding leaders say they’re not. A 2001Public Agenda poll showed that only 30percent of the nation’s principals agreedthat “the system helps you get thingsdone.” In contrast, 48 percent said theyhad to “work around” the system to accom-plish their goals.

That climate represents a major barrierto school improvement, contends William G.Ouchi, the author of Making Schools Work:A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Childrenthe Education They Need. He favors strate-gies used in Seattle, Houston, and Edmon-

ton, Alberta, all of which have shifted muchdecisionmaking authority over budget andpersonnel issues to the school level.

“Every school has a different mixture ofchildren with different kinds of educa-tional needs,” says Ouchi, who is a profes-sor of management at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles. “If you impose onevery school the same formula for thenumber of 8th grade science teachers or3rd grade reading teachers, then you’renecessarily giving them something differ-ent from what they need.”

Memphis offers another model for givingschool leaders more authority. In hiringNew Leaders for New Schools to train 60new principals over the next three years,the district struck a deal with the localteachers’ union that will give graduates ofthe program greater latitude in theirstaffing decisions if they agree to lead one ofthe district’s lowest-performing schools.

“If you have a strong instructional leaderat the school-site level, you want to givethem as much flexibility as possible, as longas they get results,” says Carol R. Johnson,the superintendent of the 118,000-studentdistrict.

Johnson says she learned the impor-tance of doing so in her former job as thechief of the 50,000-student Minneapolisschool district. While there, she let PatrickHenry High School use money designatedfor two assistant-principal positions to re-lease five teachers from the classroom sothey could work with other educators atthe school to improve their instruction.

The school was, and continues to be, oneof the best-performing in the city. The les-son underscores another point many ex-perts make about instructional leadership:Fostering improvements in teaching andlearning often requires that principals el-evate others in their buildings to leader-ship positions.

“It’s about principals,” says Johnson, “butit’s also about empowering the school site sothat teachers and others own the resultsand the decisions around the changes.” ■

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

This special pullout section is the first of three Education Week annual reports that will examine leadership in education, a topic of critical concern at a time of ever-increasing expectations for schools.Each report will include a mix of explanatoryarticles and research findings analyzed by the newspaper’s research staff.

The project is underwritten by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, anindependent, national private foundationestablished by DeWitt and Lila AchesonWallace, the founders of The Reader’sDigest Association. The foundation hasthree objectives: to strengthen educationleadership to improve studentachievement; to improve after-schoollearning opportunities; and to expandparticipation in arts and culture. For moreinformation on the philanthropy, visitwww.wallacefoundation.org.



Instructional Leadership

To see how principals go about their work, the Education WeekResearch Center analyzed data from the federal 1999-2000 Schoolsand Staffing Survey. The nationally representative survey includes theresponses of 9,893 public school principals and 56,354 public schoolteachers. School leaders say they engage in management-relatedactivities such as ensuring security and attending to the schoolbuilding far more often than they provide instructional leadership.They also are much less likely to have discretion over how to spendtheir school’s budget and how to train staff members than overstudent discipline and teacher hiring. Less than half the teachers said their principals often talk to them about instruction.

Time on Task

In the last month, how often did you engage in thefollowing activities in your role as principal of this school?

The principal knowswhat kind of schoolhe/she wants and has communicated it to the staff.

The principal talks with me frequently about myinstructional practices.

Maintain the physical security ofstudents, faculty, and other staff

Manage school facilities,resources, procedures

Facilitate student learning

Provide and engage staff inprofessional-development activities

Attend district-level meetings and carryout district-level responsibilities

Guide the development and evaluationof curriculum and instruction

Build a professional communityamong faculty and other staff

Facilitate achievementof the school’s mission

Develop public relations

Supervise and evaluatefaculty and other staff

In the last 12 months, have you participated in the following kinds of professional development?

48

35

35

32

11

23

Strongly agree

Somewhat agree

Somewhat disagree

Strongly disagree

86

27

40

40

47

48

53

82

8

16

8 5 1

13 5 1

29 16 1

36 14 1

29 23 1

32 26 2

29 30 2

39 31 3

40 43 1

30 60 2

Percent of principals

Percent of principals answering “yes”

83

96

74

71

58

43

40

41

Workshops or conferences related to your role as principal

Attending professional-association meetings

Visits to other schools designed to improve your own work as a principal

University courses related to your role as principal

Mentoring and/or peer observation and coaching principals

Workshops or training where you were the presenter

Participating in a principal network

Individual or collaborative research on a topic of interest to you professionally

Training for Principals

Areas of Influence

Percent of teachers

Note: Percentages may not equal 100 because of rounding.

Clear Vision

Every day Once or twice a week Once or twice a month Never

80

Perc

ent o

f prin

cipa

ls

6974

4148

35 31

Principals were asked to rank the amount of influence they have over the following areas.Below are the percentages who responded “a great deal of influence.”

125

Evaluating teachersin this school

Hiring new full-time teachers

at this school

Setting discipline policyat this school

Deciding how yourschool budgetwill be spent

Determining the content of

in-service professional-development programs

for teachers in this school

Setting performancestandards for students

in this school

Establishing curriculumat this school




Mesa, Ariz.Fredi Buffmire, the principal at Mendoza

Elementary School here, faces an epidemic of“pantsing.” A growing number of her students,it seems, are unable to resist the temptation tosneak up behind their classmates and pulldown their trousers. Most of the offenders, andvictims, are boys.

For each incident, she fills out a carbon-copy form. She keys it into a computer log.Because it involves what could be seen assexual misconduct, she notifies a police officerassigned to the building. She also metes outpunishment: typically the loss of playtime.

“How would you feel if a grown-up walked up

and jerked your pants down?” she lectures oneof the many pint-sized perpetrators who passthrough her office.

So goes a normal morning for a school leader.While the best thinking on educationalleadership says principals should devote thebulk of their energies to improving instruction,Buffmire, 56, has her hands full with studentdiscipline and paperwork.

Her situation here in the 70,000-studentMesa, Ariz., school district is hardly unusual.When a federal survey in 2000 asked principalswhich activities they engaged in daily, more than80 percent cited issues related to security andfacilities. By contrast, 53 percent said “facilitatestudent learning,” and 40 percent said “build aprofessional community.”

True, Buffmire has left her mark on teaching

and learning at Mendoza Elementary. A nativeof Alaska who projects a pioneer’s sense ofassuredness, she’s launched programs to giveextra attention to her most struggling students.In her five years here, she’s hired half theschool’s 50 teachers. Staff members praise herfor creating an atmosphere of trust in whichthey can try new methods.

But as is evident in a typical workday,instructional leadership for Buffmire often musttake a back seat to getting boxes for a teacherwho’s transferring or helping parents arrange afund-raiser. As the lone administrator in chargeof 824 pupils in grades pre-K-6 and a staff of125, she spends much of her time putting outfires and navigating red tape.

“There are times when you feel like apingpong ball,” Buffmire says.

PAPER TRAILS

Nestled in a warren of new housingdevelopments outside Phoenix, MendozaElementary School sprawls across threepermanent buildings and nine portable units, all in desert hues. Its courtyards arehome to cactuses, cages of tropical birds, and

BY JEFF ARCHER

For one typical elementary school principal,dealing with paperwork, student discipline, and routine duties consumes most of the day.

PUTTING OUT FIRES

Fredi Buffmire, the principal of Mendoza Elementary School, wipes down tables in the cafeteria, where she spends an hour of every work day.




pens of baby goats and turtles.The campus is quiet when Buffmire arrives at

6:30 a.m., two hours before the start of class. Withthe lights off in her office, she works through amulticolored pile of forms. Some are for correctingtime sheets. Others ensure that employees getpaid at the correct rate. She signs several studentaward certificates, each bearing the school’smascot: a dog with black and white spots.

“I feel like I’m paid a lot of money to push alot of paper,” says Buffmire, whose 12-monthcontract earns her roughly $80,000.

Along with such documents, she keeps plentyof her own records. Throughout the day, she logsall of her phone calls on a steno pad. A separatefile contains notes from her contacts withparents. After 23 years as a principal in Arizonaand Alaska, she’s learned the importance ofleaving a paper trail.

The “pantsing” problem is a case in point. Inanother era, such misbehavior might havemerited little more than a call home. Butrecently, two administrators at a Mesa highschool faced criminal charges for failing to alertpolice about what investigators said was sexualabuse by one student against another. Now,principals here aren’t taking any chances whenphysical contact takes place.

“I tell teachers: ‘When they touch, you sendthem to me,’” Buffmire says.

In three hours this morning, she handles halfa dozen disciplinary actions, reflecting a range ofseverity. There’s the student who kicked hisfriend for throwing a football into a tree, poppingit. There’s the boy who grabbed a younger childby the throat so hard that it left red marks.

Buffmire’s most difficult case of the dayinvolves a boy whose acting-up in class gotprogressively worse. The problem is that hestopped taking medicine to treat a behavioraldisorder, the principal says. It doesn’t help thathis parents are feuding.

“It’s not that you didn’t have kid-parentproblems before, but the magnitude of theproblem is greater,” says Buffmire, who meets

with the school’s nurse, its police officer, and thechild’s teacher before calling his mother. “There’smore to teach; there’s more to know. But whenyou run into a problem, it’s worse than it was 20years ago.”

MAKING THE ROUNDS

Amid the morning rush of disciplinary cases,Buffmire manages to focus on student learningfor a few minutes when she meets with aretired principal who stops by. He’s beenhelping her compile a set of user-friendly databooks on student achievement for her teachers.They’ll show the test scores of each class,compared with scores for similar local schoolsand the district as a whole.

At 11:40 a.m., Buffmire heads to thecafeteria with a small plastic tub that holdskeys, a walkie-talkie, a clipboard of classschedules, and her lunch. As part of her dailyritual, she spends about an hour helping withthe midday meal, handing out milk andwiping down tables while eating from a plastic

bag full of chopped vegetables.“It gives me an opportunity to be around the

kids,” she says. “And I see most of the teachers.”Interacting with students and staff

members takes such conscious efforts. Alongwith lunch duty today, Buffmire holds three10-minute assemblies to issue remindersabout the school’s code of conduct. She visits arehearsal for “Rats,” a student musical basedon the Pied Piper story. As she moves acrossthe campus in short, quick strides, studentsoften run up to give her hugs.

Other days, she spends more time withteachers. Every other Thursday, she hand-delivers paychecks to all the educators in thebuilding, partly as an excuse to observe them. Inmid to late fall, she visits classrooms daily toconduct personnel evaluations, spending themost time with her novice teachers. Ideally, she’dlike to do so throughout the year.

“If I had more time to spend in individualclasses—kind of teasing out what individualsdo—I could use the teachers more effectively tohelp each other,” she says.

Back in her office, she makes several phone

PHOTOS BY TOM STORY

Left, Buffmire gets an early start byarriving at her school before 6:30 a.m.Below, she speaks with a specialeducation teacher she hopes to hire.Bottom, the principal attends ameeting to review a student’s special education plan.




calls. A few are to teachers she hopes torecruit for two programs that she’s trying tostart at Mendoza: one offering a Montessoricurriculum, and another for students withsevere emotional problems. Knowing she facesstiff competition for such specialists, sheworries that some haven’t called back.

Another set of calls relates to plans by herschool’s parents’ group to hold an auction to raisemoney. The group wants to use student councilmoney to rent entertainment from a localcompany that leases inflatable equipment forchildren’s parties. But to make that happenrequires a series of approvals.

“It’s never simple,” says the principal.

DELEGATING

At 3 p.m., a half-hour after studentdismissal, 11 teachers squeeze into Buffmire’soffice. These are her “team leaders,” and they

include educators chosen by their peers ateach grade level. The principal meets with thegroup at least monthly. On this day, they focusmostly on housekeeping issues, including theprocess for teachers to sign up fornonclassroom duties, like supervising thelunchroom.

Throughout the year, however,Buffmire relies on the group to help plan ways to improve academics. It was with input from staff members, for instance,that she created intervention classes atMendoza—smaller classes for laggingstudents who need extra attention. Theprincipal is a strong believer in delegating,which lets her accomplish more than sheotherwise could.

“What Fredi does is she kind of has soundingboards of different people,” says 1st gradeteacher Ruth Umlauf. “It’s hard for her to havetime for us all, but what she does do is have anopen-door policy.”

Buffmire wishes she had more chances to nurture the skills of her staff members.Her teachers’ schedules allow one full day of training at the start of each year, she says. She can also usually get theirclassrooms covered twice during the year so they can work together for a couple ofhours in school. Beyond that, professionaldevelopment is largely a game of catch ascatch can. “I believe I’ve got a vision of where I want to go,” the principal says. “Youwatch for a window to open that will help youget there.”

She uses the last minutes of the day to go through e-mail. At 5 p.m., she heads home to her husband, Bruce, who teaches 5th grade at another school in Mesa. On herway out of the office, she passes a smallhandwritten note held by a clip next to heroffice door.

It reads: “Put your troubles here when youleave.” ■

Left, students read the school’s dailyannouncements in Buffmire’s office. Top, a boycries after being sent to the principal’s officefor a discipline problem. Above, Buffmire signsaward certificates for students, some of thepaperwork that she must process each day.




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