Month: August 2020

Q. How do you guide board members when they are faced with complex, controversial decisions? A. Regardless of whether we are in a period of crisis we need to help our boards operate from a pre-determined foundation; a set of core values. In the absence of established core values any idea becomes acceptable, which is almost always problematic. Superintendents should be working with their boards to establish these core values, if not already in place. Additionally, tenured superintendents likely use individual, ongoing conversations with board members as a method to “care and feed” them in their role. We need to …

It takes a lot of resilience to be in leadership right now. A primary reason is that superintendents and their teams are working in the gray; there are no clear answers and with every decision at least one group of constituents is unhappy. Working in this environment can be exhausting, especially when one does not know how long this will last nor how severe it will become. Questions present in superintendents minds today include what if a student or staff member in my district contracts the virus, or worse yet passes away? How will I handle such tragedies? Unfortunately, some …