Divide and Conquer

In Eastern Maryland, school managers take on a variety of administrative tasks so principals can focus on education.

By Roger Friedman

Glenda Soccorso strides purposefully down the wide, color-coded hallway of Easton Elementary School. She’s a consciously stylish woman with a striking red blazer, a thick black mane, and a mental list of things she needs to accomplish on this first of a dozen or more trips throughout the two-story school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

She stops to check on a substitute teacher, a young woman who’d probably have a hard time convincing a bartender she’s old enough to order anything containing alcohol. As the sub fidgets with her temporary teacher ID, Soccorso offers a few encouraging words, runs down the schedule for what’s probably the third time today, and quietly, with a wink, asks a couple of the more cooperative students to help keep order in the class.

Then she swivels and heads back up the hallway, looking scornfully at a hand-washing station outside the girls bathroom that refuses to stop flowing, adding it to her mental list as she continues on her way to visit another sub in the music room. She gets to the door, peeks inside, and decides not to interrupt what sounds like a smoothly running class. As the few children in the hallways dutifully chime “Good morning, Miss Glenda,” Soccorso marches over to the gymnasium with an envelope, the payment for a Danny Bonaduce look-alike who just entertained students with...