BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For Ed Jung, Tuesday marks the beginning of 180 days of mid-day fasting.

When you're the principal at Porter Middle School, with 425 energetic adolescents, lunch is a luxury you can't afford.

You can better use the time to patrol miles of hallways, strategically turning up ''in spots where they never think they'd see you,'' says Mr. Jung. Or grab a couple of crackers and start in on the paperwork - duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate - that stacks up on your desk.

Mr. Jung has held this job at the West End school for 15 years, leaving once to take a desk job in Cincinnati Schools' personnel office, but returning because he ''missed that sense of things happening on the ground floor.'' He has no plans to leave again until he goes out with a retirement dinner.

Most school districts would say, ah, for more Ed Jungs.

Getting to know you

As area schools start next week, there will be an unusually high number of new faces in The Office. Cincinnati Public has hired 54 new principals and assistant principals, filling some spots as late as last week. Many suburban districts have faced a similar shuffle, seeing principals leave not only for retirement or promotions, but to step back into lower-level administrative jobs, the classroom, or private sector.

Nationally, this comes as no surprise to anyone. For the past 10 years, the U.S. Department of Education and various administrators' groups have predicted half of public-school principals - more than 39,000 - would leave their jobs in the mid-1990s. In the latest survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 45 percent of principals said they did not plan to stay in their jobs until retirement or even ''as long as they are able.''

Principals used to be fixtures, like porcelain drinking fountains. They stayed in one building until their chair fit their backside. Now, many decide on a year-by-year basis how long they can deal with the demands of the job.

And it is one heck of a job.

A job with many tasks

By hours and benefits, it doesn't look so different from other mid-management positions. Elementary principals work about 53 hours per week; secondary principals, closer to 60. Last year, the average elementary salary was $52,200 and high-school, $59,700. Fringes include medical, dental and life insurance, a retirement plan and a month of vacation.

The difference lies in just how one spends those 53 hours each week.

''The number of problems facing a principal is almost endless,'' says the National Center for Education Statistics. Ed Jung says, ''You're liable for everything.''

The principal will answer for a kid climbing out a window and breaking his collarbone, a teacher being forced to use time for Key Club, a parent being treated rudely at the front desk, proficiency scores taking a nose dive.

He or she will not only attend football games and family nights, but neighborhood council meetings, art shows, pet shows and talent shows, with or without talent.

Generally, he (because 65 percent are male) will be there to open the doors when the thing starts, and to lock up when it ends. He can schmooz ''constituents'' (basically everybody in town), but if the electric goes off, if one basketball player punches another, he must come out of the stands and fix things.

His areas of expertise will include budget, litigation, union contracts, plant management, curriculum, personnel matters, health and safety, transportation, public relations. But he must never forget that he is not the CEO. He holds responsibility, but limited power. His bosses include the superintendent, board of education, state legislators of varying intelligence and integrity, every taxpayer in the community.

On any day, he will have two dozen good reasons to quit.

Then a second-grader will shyly hand him her best dinosaur drawing.

A well-spoken, polite young man will stop by to say he's leaving for college. And the principal will remember the sneaky, sulky fifth-grader he once was.

And the kid will thank the principal - for whom he once had the very best nicknames - for helping straighten him out.

The paperwork will be forgotten. The broken duplicator will go unnoticed.

At least for another day, the principal will find that one, best reason to stay.

Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

RAMSEY ARCHIVE