The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (formerly the Council of Supervisors and Administrators) represents principals, assistant principals and other administrators at all levels within the New York City school system. Its origins are in the post-World War II years, when supervisors in various categories (including assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, chairmen of departments, junior principals and principals of youth and adult centers) were represented by a number of separate, and relatively powerless, associations. By the 1950s there was a growing interest in lobbying in a more unified way for improvements in pay and terms of employment. By 1960 representatives of eleven supervisors' associations were meeting together to recommend specific salary index levels for each association. As a result of their efforts the Superintendent of Schools endorsed this indexing proposal and it became state law through the Marchi Bill of 1962.

In 1961, in the course of pressing for indexing legislation, the eleven associations came together to form a Council of Supervisory Associations of the Public Schools of New York City. Under the direction of early presidents such as Benjamin Strumpf (1961-1963), Walter Degnan (1963-1965; 1968-1970), and Stuart Lucey (1965-1967) the Council began to collect dues (indexed to salary levels), hired paid staff, and pressed for the right to represent supervisors before the Superintendent and to help shape policy. The Council's first full-time Executive Director, Al Morrison, was hired in 1964. Eventually three additional associations joined the Council, which adopted the name Council of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) in 1968.

The Board of Education recognized the Council officially and, in 1965, signed a welfare agreement that made the Council de facto welfare (benefits) agents for all supervisors.

In its early years some supervisors had agitated for a trade union form of organization (similar to the United Federation of Teachers); this proposal had failed in a narrow vote but the demand for a more militant form of representation, with dues check-off and collective bargaining, was revived in the crisis conditions that developed around the move toward system decentralization in the late 1960s. In the face of a rising tide of demands for community control and racial tensions, with flash points such as I.S. 201 in Harlem and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville District in Brooklyn, the UFT went on strike in September 1967. Soon the Association of Assistant Principals declared a work stoppage and were joined by other CSA members. A number of principals and assistant principals requested, and got, transfers, maid claims of community harassment.

The result was turmoil within CSA. On the one hand the organization rejected many of the City's decentralization plans; on the other, attempts to forge CSA affiliation with the UFT or the Teamsters met with no success. Nevertheless, in the face of opposition from some CSA members, CSA joined with the UFT to lobby in Albany against a decentralization bill. A special committee of CSA, under new president Walter Degnan, was appointed to monitor developments during the turbulent summer of 1968. In an atmosphere of continued internal dissension, agreement on seeking a contract finally emerged, and negotiations were begun. The City agreed to participate in collective bargaining and, in the fall of 1969, a contract (the first such contract for school supervisors in the country) was ratified overwhelmingly and grievance machinery was set up.

The AFL-CIO chartered the School Administrators and Supervisors Organizing Committee (spearheaded by CSA, which became SASOC, Local 1) in 1971. Renamed and re-chartered as the American Federation of School Supervisors (AFSA) in 1978, the national organization now has affiliates across the country.

In recent decades, the CSA has functioned as a fully-fledged trade-union, aggressively defending staffing, salary and benefits levels and tenure for supervisors; managing a Welfare Fund; lobbying on all legislative matters affecting public education (often in cooperation with the United Federation of Teachers and other public employee unions); providing educational and training opportunities for members; raising issues of workplace health and safety; and creating a more than 9,000-strong retirees' chapter. The union has also steadily expanded its outreach efforts, both to members and to the general public, through its bulletins and newspaper (CSA News), its web site, and its press conferences, television appearances, and radio ads.

In 2003 the CSA, along with other plaintiffs, won a notable victory in court against the Bloomberg Administration's proposal to eliminate Community School Boards. This effort, and the union's many recent initiatives to work cooperatively with community and parents' groups and to join in vigorous protests against budget cuts, marks a distinct shift in emphasis from its early struggles against rapid decentralization. In a successful organizing campaign, it has brought more than 400 directors and assistant directors of day-care centers into its ranks, and in 2005 the union negotiated a pioneering day-care contract that was overwhelmingly ratified. Also in 2005, the merger of the CSA's retirees' chapter with the Retired School Supervisors and Administrators (RSSA) created a new and effective lobbying force on issues of concern to the union.

Betty S. Ostroff, The Metamorphosis of a Professional Association into a Union. [case-study of the CSA] (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1973).

Jacob (Jack) Zuckerman. Manuscript notes on CSA history; columns and other writing in CSA News, 1990s-2003; "A Brief History of CSA" https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/20150114190146/http://www.csa-nyc.org/about-csa/history, accessed June 30, 2009.