Leadership in a tumultuous year

If you thought a year ago that being a school principal or local superintendent could not get any harder, 2020 has no doubt proven you wrong. In a year when the expression “well, it can’t get any worse” has become utterly meaningless, education leaders are managing issues and decisions more complex than most of us could have imagined back in 2019. Every day, the media is filled with stories about the perils of safely opening schools during a global pandemic, and everyone — from students to parents to your local UPS delivery person — has an opinion about how it should be handled. Everyone is an expert (except the experts), and everyone wants to have their say. And no matter what decision a principal or superintendent makes, they will catch hellfire for it from somebody.

Pandemic dilemmas

In the before times, education leaders dealt with this kind of stuff all the time, but on a much smaller and less consequential scale. COVID-19 has not so much rewritten the leadership playbook as it has erased what was there and left us with a book full of blank pages. With little to no formal guidance from the federal government, education leaders have been forced from the earliest days of the crisis to fend for themselves. The requirements and guidance that do exist, both in states and nationwide, have sometimes been scientifically based and helpful. But, all too often, support from the top has been tainted by politics, leaving local education leaders in the worst of all situations —responsible for everything, but in control of very little.

Harvard Professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman talked about this conundrum earlier this year in a panel discussion at Harvard University on equity, excellence, and leadership: “I think that all of us are feeling a lack of control. I think that as leaders, we prioritize an orderly school day, in which all of the needs of students, and staff, and teachers are taken care of. And that ability has been taken away from each and every one of us” (Anderson, 2020). Jewell-Sherman also talked about the challenge of managing politics during times of crisis, which requires leaders to “negotiate[e] with people to get things done” and to be “brutally honest while remaining optimistic.” At the end of the day, she says, “you’re the superintendent, you talk to your spouse, your partners, and your dog about all the problems. But public facing, you’ve got to stand strong.”

While this advice is, of course, exactly right, heavy is the head that wears the crown in the COVID era. Take, for example, the simple act of mask wearing. The fact that mask-wearing requirements became fodder for a vitriolic public debate this past summer represents just one small part of the very practical, but also deeply personal, challenges education leaders face right now. In addition to all the operational issues they are managing, they’ve also had to ramp up their efforts to communicate, engage, and reassure their communities, becoming as transparent as possible at a time when the stakes feel higher than they’ve ever been. And, at the same time, they’re being asked to do more with less as state and local budgets continue to dwindle.

As we prepare to close out the dumpster fire that was 2020, the work of local education leaders is far from over. To get an on-the-ground status update, I spoke to Michael Hanson (former superintendent of Fresno Unified in California and now an executive coach to districts around the country) about the ongoing challenges facing local education leaders.

What educators want

Hanson said that the lack of clear, appropriate, and ongoing strategic direction from those in government has been among the greatest frustrations. “The impact on local school districts, their leadership, and their larger communities has been profoundly disorienting, absent a national strategy and support.” As recently as a year ago, superintendents were answerable primarily to their local school board for direction, but now the voices have multiplied. “For nearly seven months, literally on any given day, federal officials, state leaders, county supervisors, mayors, city councils, health officers or even influential community members were able to swing the direction of planning and recovery.”

“The public needs to understand that even under the best of circumstances, the expectations of the school district superintendent are unrealistic every day in just about each way imaginable.”

He also expressed genuine concern about the toll this ongoing crisis is taking on educators. “The exhaustion is real for superintendents, district leadership, principals, boards of education, and labor organizations.” The intellectual, political, and social-emotional demands of the job were already difficult to manage, but they have become even more so as uncertainty and politicization have put a strain on the collaborative relationships among superintendents, school boards, and union leaders. Hanson said the best outcome from all of this would be to focus on continuous improvement. “All we can do is to be humble about the lessons we are learning and codify best practices so we are more prepared for the next event.”

I also asked Hanson if he felt it was realistic or even fair to expect local education leaders to have all the answers to this crisis. His answer: “Simply put, it is not realistic to think or expect that local education leaders will immediately have all the answers to something that is global in scale, local in its intensity, and complex to the degree that no one living has experienced. While perhaps not popular to declare, the public needs to understand that even under the best of circumstances, the expectations of the school district superintendent are unrealistic every day in just about each way imaginable.”

Funding and equity

One of the biggest obstacles for school districts during the crisis has been funding, which Hanson succinctly described as “thoroughly inadequate.” While the CARES Act provided some relief, those funds need to be spent by the end of 2020. Hanson said the fact that negotiations for additional spending were put on hold for so long “put districts in an untenable position going forward.” He would like to see a more comprehensive response that gives districts as much flexibility as possible and builds on lessons learned from the response to the 2008 recession.

Since the pandemic, as well as the protests for racial justice, has made the public more aware of financial and racial inequity in education, I wanted to know if Hanson thought this moment in time could be a catalyst for real progress in these areas. While he acknowledged that there are public school systems and charter management organizations that have been recognized for their work on the deep racial inequities that exist in our communities, he also noted that “we are nowhere near the necessary scale required to ameliorate the issues deeply rooted in poverty.” Hanson went on to say “the size and scope of the current economic decline, coupled with COVID-19 and social unrest, all combine to produce a force so strong as to place the issues and challenges of racial disparities in our education system on permanent display for all to see. The question now is, what are we going to do about this to live up to the ideals of a free, just, and inclusive country that still stands as a beacon for the world?”

If we actually listen to seasoned educators like Mike Hanson and Deborah Jewell-Sherman, 2021 has the potential to be a transformative year for education. We may not be able to resolve all of the issues these leaders and the communities they serve are facing, but we can at least agree on what’s important. By any reckoning, our nation’s public schools remain a work in progress, but we have an opportunity now to more fully reflect on what we’ve done well and where we have fallen short. There is hope in that, no matter how hard an exercise it may be.

Reference

Anderson, J. (2020, April 16). School leadership during crisis. Harvard EdCast.