Here is something to consider: If you did a search for books about leadership on Amazon.com last Tuesday, you would have been presented with a whopping 259,318 titles to choose from.

I have to make sure I say “last Tuesday,” before we went to press, because by now that number very well may have grown. Leadership seems to be one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on, not always backed up by fact but certainly packaged as if it were the most important advice to ever be sandwiched between two covers.

Consider that number: 259,318. If you read one of those books a week for the next 90 years, you still wouldn’t get through the entire stack. Whether you would be a better leader at the end of that endeavor, I don’t know. If you weren’t one, I suppose you’d at least have a good idea of why.

Since part of my job description is to report on what our county leaders are up to, I’ve had the opportunity to see numerous examples of leadership styles, both the solid and the questionable.

I’m sure we can all pinpoint one or two examples of the latter—I do read the letters to the editor, after all—but I’d like to make a mention of one example of leadership I was able to witness Monday that I think we could all do well to keep in mind.

It’s no secret that money is tight in this county right now, as it seems to be pretty much everywhere. And it’s no surprise that the local school system has been feeling the pinch.

In the weeks leading up to the Board’s final budget decision, Superintendent Dr. Margaret S. Meara could be found at just about every workshop and meeting, urging the Board to remember the County’s teachers. She made no secret of the fact that this was the tightest budget she has seen in all her years as superintendent.

I think what she did was what we hope all of our leaders would do—that is, fight for the cause of those they lead—but what she did last Monday took it a step further.

Meara announced in Monday’s morning school board meeting, during which the Board approved salary increases for employees, that she will not be having an administrative assistant this year. The salary she would have paid that person will go back into the school’s budget in order to help provide, among other things, raises for teachers.

Can Meara function without an administrative assistant? Probably, yes. Does she have to? No.

She has proven herself, with that decision, to be the kind of leader who will not ask others to make sacrifices without making some herself.

That is the kind of leadership example, and I’m sure everyone but the folks at Amazon would agree with this, that is worth 259,318 books.