Principals are the unsung heroes of public schools, individuals who can literally make or break a school. A strong principal with a clear vision, a rich store of knowledge and experience about the theoretical and practical aspects of education, a facility for dealing with a wide-variety of people with nuance and compassion is someone who can transform schools from institutions to second homes.

Last Friday, Mayor Gavin Newsom recognized four such individuals at each of the academic levels by giving them the newly created Mayor’s Principal of the Year Award:

• Sandra Osborne, Presidio Child Development Center
• Bonnie Coffey-Smith, McKinley Elementary School
• Carmelo Sgarlato, James Lick Middle School
• Kevin Truitt, Mission High School

Each of these principals has led his or her respective communities to great accomplishments, growing and developing their schools in wonderful ways. And, as was so clearly noted at Friday’s press conference, these accomplishments in turn have a significant benefit to the surrounding neighborhoods and the City as a whole. The continued improvement of our schools, especially in these financially and policy challenged times, is essential for the continued vitality of our City. We know that the persistent problem of unaffordable and unavailable housing can be so great as to push families over the edge and across City boundaries, particularly when they are considering schools at transition points and when their perceptions may be based on old or inaccurate information. Thus the skills of our principals are not only essential for our own children, but are a crucial factor for all who are concerned with the overall livability of San Francisco for all of its residents.

Those intimately connected to a school regularly observe the incredible, sometimes seemingly miraculous, accomplishments that principals achieve each day. As organizational leaders, small and large crises are brought to their office doors, from misbehavior on the playground, to missing buses for field trips, to leaking roofs. They are required to partake in Sisyphean planning tasks, reworking for the umpteenth time academic school plans that must be meaningful to community members, staff, district administrators and that must be frequently and rapidly revised when budget situations change at each stage of the school planning process. They must be financial wizards engaged in continued “creative” budget exercises for varying degrees of debt, prosperity and liquidity.

As educational leaders, principals must be experts who are continually up to date on educational pedagogy for the development stages and disciplines covered in their schools. In addition, they must be well-versed in federal, state and local policy requirements for curricula standards and assessment approaches--and must be agile enough to meet those requirements without sacrificing either the education of their students or the professional integrity of themselves and their teaching staff. As part of this, they must be adept at spotting the sparsely scatter gold nuggets buried within the mountains of quantitative data generated by standardized tests. At the same time, they must be perceptive and complex in their approaches to assessment so that they can see beyond these tests to the potential of the students they serve.

Principals are also community leaders, mentors and role models. They must hand-hold, listen to and embrace anxious parents, angry parents, and enthusiastic parents. They must shepherd our communities, understanding district rules and procedures and interpreting them for the rest of us, leading us through a labyrinth of forms, acronyms and routines as we work with them to build and maintain our schools. They must support and grow their staff, giving them freedom and structure, respect and guidance. Lastly, and most important, they must keep us energized and optimistic that we are doing the best we can each day for our children, and that tomorrow can only be an improvement.

The principals honored on Friday fit this demanding, impossible profile and the students and adults in their schools have benefited greatly from their presence. Board of Education member and Educational Advisor to Mayor Gavin Newsom Hydra Mendoza noted on Friday that this year was the first year principals had been so honored in the City, commenting that this year would mark a change in that direction. Such an honoring bodes well at any time, but especially at this moment when schools are under such strain, for so many different reasons.

This is a time when we are so greatly in need of public education champions whose deeds we can celebrate and whose accomplishments and demeanor can inspire us. Publicly acknowledging the work of such fine people is important, especially since their efforts on behalf of their schools so often go unnoticed. But we should honor them in another way too, by expanding their impact and working with them to distribute their skills and wisdom across our entire district.

Lisa Schiff is the parent of two children who attend McKinley Elementary School in the San Francisco Unified School District and is a member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco and the PTA and is a board member at the national level of Parents for Public Schools.