For the Redmond School District, it’s become a routine that unfolds every few years.

A superintendent is picked to lead the district and resigns for greener pastures. The district’s pending search for a permanent replacement to Superintendent Shay Mikalson will be the fifth hunt for a leader since 2003. While that search is under way in the upcoming school year, Mike McIntosh, the district’s director of operations, will be the interim superintendent.

For students graduating high school in 2013 and in the Redmond system since kindergarten, that means six superintendents will have led the district at one time or another during their 13-year academic career.

For Redmond, the trend has been shorter superintendent tenures since 2003. The average Redmond superintendent tenure since 2003 is slightly longer than two years. Factor in Jerry Colonna’s nine-year stretch from 1994 to 2003, and the average tenure bumps up to 3.6 years.

“For some of them, a superintendency is an ascension in a career ladder,” Redmond Board Chairman Jim Erickson said. “Redmond is not a little district, but we’re not a big district. In some cases, it’s a step along the highway.”

Colonna moved on to the Beaverton School District, where he was superintendent until retiring in 2011. Mikalson is leaving at the end of June for a job with Bend-La Pine Schools as the executive director of curriculum and instructional technology.

Erickson said the district’s transition team will look at how to add stability moving forward.

“Stability, I believe, is facilitated when a person is here for longer rather than shorter amounts of time,” he said, adding that keeping the district’s goals unaltered amid staffing changes is also key.

National averages

Thomas Alsbury, professor of educational leadership at Seattle Pacific University, teaches students preparing for careers as superintendents. Alsbury said the average stay for superintendents is about five years. In urban districts, it’s shorter, with superintendents sticking around for about three years, according to the American Association of School Administrators.

Those short stays in large districts drag down the overall average, Alsbury said.

For a district like Redmond, the average stay is about five to six years, he said.

Alsbury, who has researched the broader issue of turnover, said superintendents tend to head for the door sooner when school boards are politically volatile and in turmoil.

Of course, superintendents also leave for larger districts, he said.

His advice to future superintendents: work well with your school board.

“You have to prepare students first of all to understand how to work with their school board members, and how to work with new and changing school boards,” Alsbury said. “That’s a reality, and how effective they are in working with new school board members partly determines that turnover rate.”

Other districts

Bend-La Pine Schools — the largest district in Central Oregon — has had less turnover.

Doug Nelson was superintendent from 2000 to 2008, when Ron Wilkinson took the job.

School board member Peggy Kinkade said that stability has allowed the district to focus on long-term efforts like curriculum initiatives. The district’s larger size also provides a strong support framework for superintendents with staffed departments covering areas like business and human resources, she said.

Strong working relationships between the board and a superintendent are a key, Kinkade said. The district has weekly meetings with the superintendent and three board members: the chairman, the vice chairman and a rotating board member.

“We can speak very frankly about how things are going and what our concerns are,” Kinkade said.

She also noted qualities in Wilkinson that are required for any superintendent.

“I’m sure we probably drive him crazy sometimes, but he’s very patient,” she said. “He’s a really straight shooter, and I think that’s really crucial.”

The Sisters School District has had five superintendents and one interim superintendent since 1996. Most superintendents have had tenures of two to three years, though one had a seven-year stint, working from 1996 to 2003.

“Hiring the right superintendent and providing guidance is probably the most important thing we do as a school board,” said Glen Lasken, vice chairman of the Sisters School District Board.

In the past decade, four superintendents — plus a one-year interim superintendent — have worked at the Crook County School District. Two worked four- and five-year stints.

One superintendent, Gary Peterson, left in 2004 for a bigger district: Redmond.

School Board Chairwoman Patti Norris said there wasn’t an expectation for departing superintendents to be on the job for 10 or 15 years, noting that some retired afterward. When Superintendent Duane Yecha was hired in 2011, about 20 people applied, Norris said.

The Jefferson County School District has had five superintendents in the last decade, said School Board Chairman Brad Holliday.

He describes it as “too many.” The bright spot for the district is that the current superintendent, Rick Molitor, has been on the job since 2008.

As for what districts can do to keep superintendents around, Holliday said not overworking them is important, but added: “That’s easier said than done.”