Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Susan Enfield plans to leave the district in June rather than seek the top job permanently - nine months after being appointed as interim.

The board planned to consider the superintendent post in January. With Enfiield planning to leave at the end of the year (and the fact that national searches are huge, costly undertakings, the board has already begun writing the RFP for search firms. Update: The board's executive committee met and set a three-week timeline for getting proposals back from search firms.

Enfield's decision not to seek the job permanently is disappointing. Who knows if she could have gotten the majority of votes from the seven-member board, but the sad fact is she didn't try. Her resume was thinner than most big-city superintendents. Before Seattle, Enfield had never held the top job in a school district. But she had strong potential and was certainly competitive enough to be considered among candidates for the job.

Great piece in the Christian Science Monitor on superintendent searches. Particularly the part about how we set ourselves up for failure in our quest for the perfect superintendent.

Starting fresh is overrated. The district loses momentum each time the top leader leaves. A new superintendent comes in with their own ideas, priorities and plans. No superintendent comes in and promises more of the same, even if the same is what the public signed onto.

Seattle's school system faces challenges typical of most urban districts. Buit there is something more and darker at play here. In a city of affluence and high education, the lines of opportunitiy run along a racially and socially-economically stratified continuum. The number of nonprofits like the Gates Foundation or leaders like Enfield who have tried to address this before throwing up their hands and leaving is worth noting.

Enfield sort of gets at this in the final lines of her letter announcing her departure.

"While we may hold different opinions on how to best serve our students, we must remember they are counting on us to fulfill our mission of ensuring that they are prepared for college, career and life. It is essential that we discipline ourselves to keep this mission and our students at the forefront of all we do, and not allow adult issues, egos and politics to stand in the way."

Information in this blog post, originally published Dec. 16, 2011, was corrected Dec. 21. A previous version gave an incomplete picture of Enfield's professional background. While, Enfield's only superintendent-level experience before Seattle had been as Deputy Superintendent of Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, she had worked in an urban setting before: Director of Teaching and Learning for Portland Public Schools.