Latina superintendents in rural South Texas and the social and cultural values impacting their success in the superintendency

According to the 2016-2017 Rural Schools Spotlight Report, Texas is home to more than 1,240 school districts with almost 665 serving less than 1,000 students. One focus for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has been serving the needs of small and rural sites as they comprise more than 50% of the state’s districts. In South Texas, a number of these rural districts are high Latino/a, majority low-socioeconomic students. While some Latina superintendents lead these districts, nationally, Latina superintendents are not serving districts where a majority of Latino/a students, attend. This study explored the intersection of not only Latina social capital, but rural community cultural capital as well with regard to impact on successful Latina leadership (Murphy, 2015). Dominant themes in the study were: support in the superintendency, Latina leadership, and capacity of rural leaders, and the Latina’s barriers to the superintendency. These ways of knowing and strategies for navigating leadership through maximizing both social and cultural capital to impact Latina/o students, is anticipated to contribute to the extant research literature.