To examine the perceptions of superintendents regarding the issues involved in teacher strikes and how they see strikes affecting principals, students, school boards, and themselves, a list of the districts throughout the United States that had experienced a strike during the years 1984 through 1987 was obtained from the Government Employee Relations Report. Questionnaires were sent to 135 superintendents of these school districts; the response rate was 42.2 percent. The superintendents perceived that the principals, who should be the key leaders in the school system, were put in the position of upholding policies that they did not formulate and mending fences with the teachers who struck over those very policies. The same policies and ways of operating that helped precipitate the strikes remained unchanged in the majority of districts after the strikes. Superintendents, who helped formulate the policies and ways of operating in the districts were overwhelmingly unaffected by the strikes and remained in their positions after the strikes. Teachers were perceived as striking primarily over monetary issues, perhaps due to the collective bargaining processes in place. Yet district policies and operating procedures may well be the actual--but hidden--issues in strikes and perhaps it is the state laws, governing schools and issues that can be bargained that hide the real problem areas as teachers preceive them. These results indicate that the role superintendents play in a district needs reevaluation. (KM)