The Superintendent of Schools is the Board of Education's executive officer and District's educational leader. He advises the Board on broad direction for the academic and non-academic program and works with the staff to translate policy into action. He monitors programs and provides the Board information to perform their oversight function. He provides a final level of appeal for administrative decisions. With the Board president, he is the District's public spokesperson.

Michael V. McGill has served the Scarsdale schools community since 1998. A graduate of Williams College and Harvard University, he taught English in Lexington, Massachusetts and directed a federal anti-poverty program in New Hampshire before becoming a school district head in Massachusetts, an independent school head, and for 14 years, superintendent of the North Shore Schools on Long Island.

He says that the aim of Scarsdale's leadership is "to listen carefully and to provide reasoned, humane support and direction for those we touch."

Among previous Scarsdale superintendents have been Richard Hibschman, formerly Head of the Pembroke Hill School; Thomas Sobol, Professor of Education emeritus at Columbia University and former New York State Commissioner of Education; and the late Harold Howe II, who was Professor of Education at Harvard University and United States Commissioner of Education.