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Building trust when the superintendent opens the school system in ways that are visible and felt

First-year superintendents often feel radically exposed to the public eye, especially compared to when they were in prior roles as teachers in closed-door classrooms or assistant superintendents with central-office insulation.

Now, every decision is out there. Every misstep is amplified. For superintendents who do not resemble the majority archetype 鈥� 64 percent of superintendents in the U.S. are white men 鈥� the scrutiny can feel more intense and the pool of public grace much shallower.

But while superintendents can feel fully visible as public officials, stakeholders frequently experience the opposite: a school district that is inaccessible or unresponsive. In Weld County RE-8, where about 2,500 students hail from rural communities in Colorado, one faith leader told new superintendent Justin Ralston that he had served for nearly 20 years and never once had been invited into a school building. His congregation wanted to help the schools but had no idea how. From the district鈥檚 perspective, the door was open. From his, it had never been unlocked.

This Colorado pastor鈥檚 experience mirrors broader trends in transparency and public trust. Gallup polling shows that confidence in public schools hovered near 40 percent from the mid-1990s through 2006, dipped to an all-time low of 26 percent in 2014, briefly recovered to 41 percent at the start of the pandemic and has since fallen back to roughly 28 percent, in a tier of public institutions in which only about one-quarter of Americans express high confidence.

A superintendent鈥檚 opportunity is to open the system in ways constituents can see and feel 鈥� and that means expanding the tent beyond the usual participants and listening more attentively for shared values. Students, teachers and families are the obvious constituencies, but schools exist within a broader ecosystem: faith leaders, business owners, civic organizations and community members whose connection to the school district is indirect but deeply interdependent.

Public Trust

Why does public trust matter? It is the currency superintendents and school boards spend in service of students, whether that means persistent implementation of a strategy that needs more time or taking a heterodox stance to disrupt the status quo. Without public will, without a genuine orientation toward reciprocal relationships across a broad swath of constituents, district leadership is unlikely to have transformative power. Right now, evidence spanning student mental health, academic performance and social connection demands nothing less.

Superintendents鈥� work as trust builders is both to represent and to shape a community鈥檚 vision for its next generation.

The best way to bolster trustworthiness, based on research from organizational management authority David Maister, author of Managing the Professional Service Firm, is to be others-oriented and create intimate settings where neighbors and colleagues feel comfortable to let their guard down. The difference between superficial and deep stakeholder relationships lies in how a leader listens 鈥� personally and at scale 鈥� and in what that listening ultimately makes possible.

Personal Listening

A one-on-one conversation is the most direct way to build trust. It is also the most conducive setting for uncovering what journalist Amanda Ripley calls the 鈥渦nderstory鈥� of any conflict: the values, fears and motivations that lie beneath a person鈥檚 stated grievance.

In a group setting, people perform. In a private conversation, especially one held in a neutral, low-power setting like a coffee shop or on a walk together, guards tend to come down.

Harvard鈥檚 Ronald Heifetz, a prominent author on public leadership, argues that adaptive work, the kind that requires people to change their own behavior, not just adopt a new program, can only happen inside a 鈥渉olding environment鈥� with enough relational trust for people to persist through discomfort rather than cut ties when things get hard.

Personal listening is how leaders begin to construct that environment. It signals genuine curiosity rather than superficial engagement, and it gives individuals a chance to tell their own story of connection to or alienation from the school system.

When Ralston arrived in July 2025 as the new superintendent of the 2,500-student Weld County schools in Colorado, he structured his entire entry plan around this practice: more than 300 individual conversations with principals, teachers, staff, board members, faith leaders, business owners and city council members in his first months. He found far more commonality across his community than divisions, and he converted that listening into a strategic plan and an emergent bond campaign to overcome two prior failed votes. (See related story, page page 27.)

Listening at Scale

Even intentionally planned one-on-one conversations cannot reach everyone, and they carry their own biases. Voices heard are not always representative. This is where listening at scale becomes essential, not as a replacement for personal listening but as its complement.

Surveys have gone out to families of students for years. But two specific strategies convert a solid standing habit into a high-value practice.

The first is technology-enabled platforms, many now with embedded AI analysis that allows respondents to see and react to one another鈥檚 perspectives. What were one-way channels can become windows into collective sentiment. Parents can see what other parents care about. Teachers can learn where their concerns overlap with those of the business community.

Several platforms enable this kind of reciprocal feedback, turning the school district into a mirror rather than a megaphone. Crucially, this broader denominator of public sentiment helps leaders calibrate a proportional response, resisting the pull to give disproportionate weight to the loudest minority voices or the most recent conversation in the room.

The second strategy is closing the loop. Reflect back on what the district heard and show what it intends to do about it. This is arguably the strongest trust-building move a superintendent can make after any round of listening because it demonstrates that the input was not performative. Community voice converts to visible action, which strengthens the district鈥檚 credibility and reliability.

The message shifts from 鈥渢hank you for your feedback鈥� to 鈥渉ere is what you told us, and here is what we are going to do.鈥� Even when that direction is not supported unanimously or even by a strong consensus, stakeholders feel seen, heard, and respected, deepening their long-term investment.

In Newton, Mass., a well-resourced, high-performing suburban district just outside Boston with nearly 12,000 students, superintendent Anna Nolin chose to survey families who had left the district for private schools. The purpose was not to change their minds or win them back 鈥� it was to understand their motivations with genuine curiosity. What were they seeking that Newton鈥檚 public schools had not provided?

The move signaled something important, that these families still mattered to the district even after they had opted out and that their perspective carried information worth acting on. For Newton, the collected intelligence helped sharpen the Newton schools鈥� effort to retain other families. But the act of asking also reinforced a broader message: The district鈥檚 circle of listening extended beyond its current enrollment rosters.

Listening as Response

Listening is not only a proactive strategy. It often is the most effective response when conflict escalates. Ripley鈥檚 work on the understory is especially useful here. The goal is not to win an argument but to understand what the argument is really about.

A productive dispute achieves one of three things: (1) understanding your own values more clearly; (2) understanding the other person鈥檚 motivations; or (3) gaining a deeper sense of the real dilemma. None of those require agreement. All of them keep conflict in a zone where the community can recover.

Jason DeFalco faced exactly this test when he was superintendent of the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District in Massachusetts, a working-class small-town system of 1,450 students. The district was implementing the newly revised state education agency鈥檚 PK鈥�12 Health Framework, which includes LGBTQ+ themes, topics and standards. A small group of families became increasingly vocal and increasingly hostile on social media in their opposition.

Rather than respond through official channels or let the conflict play out online, DeFalco invited the most vocal families into his office. He opened with a question that gave them permission to say the thing they needed to say: 鈥淲hat are you truly afraid will happen to your children with these standards in place?鈥� There was no tap dancing. That made it possible to start the real conversation.

The effect was humanizing in both directions. Being in the room with a real person, not a faceless institution to criticize from behind a screen, lowered the temperature. DeFalco took the time to make sure these families did not feel like widgets being managed through a process but rather like valued members of a shared community whose concerns warranted genuine attention.

The meeting did not produce perfect agreement, but it kept a small problem small. It replaced an escalating public narrative with a private, human exchange 鈥� exactly the kind of move that builds reciprocal connection while keeping self-orientation low.

Social Infrastructure

Listening, personally and at scale, is how to build a foundation of trust upon which public will can rise and fall. Far from a single tour in the first 100 days, this posture of responsive leadership signals to a diverse set of constituents that this system is open, it sees you and it will not stop asking what you need.

When superintendents commit to that posture, they are not just gathering input for a strategic plan. They are building the public will required to reimagine what students experience every day 鈥� the quality of instruction, the breadth of opportunity, the sense that school is a place that sees them, too.

Trust in public education is not the destination. It is the condition that makes it possible to deliver something better for kids. 

Caitlin Sullivan is CEO and co-founder of Leading Now in Providence, R.I.