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September 15, 2026
Ask superintendents what surprised them most in their first year and you rarely hear about curriculum, budgets or bus routes.
You hear how their days are filled with people and meetings outside of the district. Meanwhile, the work a leader spent a career mastering — instruction, campus support, operations — now belongs to someone else.
None of that outward work is a step away from students. A principal improves outcomes one campus at a time. A superintendent does it by setting a direction the whole system moves toward, then building the team, the board relationships and the community partnerships and trust that keep that direction in place long enough to work.
The superintendency has changed faster than the systems that prepare people for the role, which led to record turnover in 2025. Holdsworth is working to support aspiring and sitting superintendents to ensure they are equipped to help all students in their district succeed.
Dr. Adrian Bustillos, Superintendent of San Antonio ISD, is a graduate of Holdsworth’s Aspiring Superintendent Accelerator and is now a member of the newest Superintendent Leadership Program cohort.
“There’s going to be a nice connectivity,” Bustillos said. “I’m excited to take what I’ve learned in the past, apply what I learn today and implement it tomorrow,” Bustillos said.
In Beyond Impossible, Holdsworth President Dr. Lindsay Whorton makes the case that the role has become virtually impossible as it is currently understood and practiced — not because the people in the seat lack capability, but because it asks one person to do two jobs at once.
Whorton – who also sits on the steering committee of Harvard’s new Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader – describes the move into the superintendency as less a ramp and more a 90-degree turn. Leaders don’t simply add responsibility. They trade skills they’ve mastered for skills they haven’t. They hand off work they love and are good at.
They also take on a new professional identity: from executor to facilitator of a vision, from driver to deep thinker, from the expert in the room to someone who takes advice, including from a board of people who aren’t educators.
In the Superintendent Leadership Program, cohorts focus on the parts of the job that get the least attention in traditional preparation: communicating to connect and mobilize, working with an elected board, navigating an external landscape and building a senior team strong enough to carry the work, and setting a transformative vision and strategy that will ensure excellent outcomes for all students.
Learning sessions take place at the Campus on Lake Austin, a setting built for the kind of thinking that is hard to do at home. They study with faculty from education, business, government and academia.
They apply their learning on the job and then reflect on the results with their peers and an executive coach — a Holdsworth superintendent-in-residence who has sat in the same chair. Coaches serve as a sounding board on the day-to-day and push where a leader is stuck.
Holdsworth covers the cost of programming thanks to the generosity of its founder and philanthropic supporters.
“When I heard about Holdsworth and their investment in superintendents, it was really exciting,” said Dr. Courtney Morawksi, Superintendent of Granbury ISD. “I had admired the caliber of leaders in other cohorts. I know my district will benefit by getting a leader who’s more focused and able to take our district to the next level.”
Many alumni describe the support from peers, just-in-time learning and on-call relationship with their coach as a lifeline that helped them get through the rocky first months and go from “surviving to thriving.”
As a result, a greater percentage of them stayed in the role, a factor that research shows supports students success: 86 percent of superintendents who completed the program have stayed in the role over the past four years compared to 60 percent of their non-Holdsworth counterparts.
Since 2021, the program has enrolled 58 superintendents across Texas. Distinguished alumni include:
The 2026 Superintendent Leadership Program cohort includes an outstanding group of leaders in 24 districts serving nearly 235,000 students across Texas:
The Superintendent Leadership Program is an 18-month program that gives dedicated, mission-driven leaders who are newer to the superintendency the skills and mindsets they need to succeed in a tough role.
Express interest and we’ll be in touch about future cohorts.