In my life I am connected to a whole lot of independent schools. Through family and friendships, not to mention professional connections, I am hearing a whole lot about life in schools during this unbelievably stressful time in our educational history. Teachers aren’t very happy, administrators aren’t very happy, and many families aren’t very happy, either. Nobody asked for this pandemic, but everyone seems happy to throw blame somewhere for the challenges they are facing in their work and in the management of their own lives.
COVID-19 sucks. It has sucked for me, and it has sucked for you. It sucks for teachers who must either reconstruct their entire body of professional training and pedagogical and curricular experience and expertise, teach each class twice over, or come to school in fear of contracting the disease—and many are having to do all these things. It sucks for administrators who have to bear the brunt of family and teacher unhappiness (that sometimes crosses the border into rage) but also interpret and communicate the wishes and directives of senior leadership and take unwanted but inevitable responsibility as the messenger. Of course it sucks for families, for whom new and changing schedules, at-home learning, and a myriad of other complications have shone a spotlight on “school” that can’t help but look shaky at best and shoddy at worst. And let us remember that teachers and administrators are also family members.
In the center of all this sits the head of school. Assailed on one side by probably conflicting directives from divided boards, family responses that range from actively threatening to tearfully grateful, and the anguish of administrative team members and teachers, the head of school knows what “life sucks” means—as the COVID-19 crisis, redoubled in impact by political and social turmoil that demands from each school an uncompromising moral reckoning that bears its own high but necessary cost, sucks the confidence right out of their souls.
The head of school is generally the one and only employee of a school’s governing board. Trustees or directors or whatever, these folks “run the school” by dint of hiring a designated manager—the school head—to do their bidding, using that individual’s judgment and experience to enact the school’s mission and the strategic priorities set by the board. This is difficult enough in “normal” times, but in this moment, it must feel nearly impossible.
There must be school governing boards where near-unanimity prevails as to “what to do” with regard to the COVID crisis, and in many cases the course of action may be congruent with the educational judgment of the head of school. In such schools the head’s course of action is clear. Even more fortunate is the head whose plans are clearly formulated, clearly stated, and make educational and personal sense to the administrative team—making consultation with these leaders a matter of transparent engagement. At these schools some families may be unhappy and teachers feel overworked and vulnerable, but the test of openness and clarity of communication can be met. Things will still suck for folks, but at least they know what is happening and why.
But far too often I am hearing about opacity, not transparency, marking the boundary between the head’s office and even the most senior administration, much less faculty and frustrated families. Two-thirds of schools who responded to a recent poll I saw have not surveyed faculty on “how things are going.” Plans are announced from on high with little or no apparent input into their creation or avenues for offering actionable feedback. People feel stonewalled.
I’m not a school head and knew from my thirties on that my own thin skin and squeamishness about putting others in uncomfortable positions would make me a truly awful one. But I’ve studied school heads for seven decades—in my toddler years this was called “not annoying your grandfather”—and I think that I can sometimes see things behind the blackout curtains behind which school heads occasionally seem to be acting.
The opacity, I believe, comes from a wrongheaded but also dead accurate belief that stating the whole and real case for difficult decisions would make things somehow worse. Right now many of these decisions feel life-or-death for the institutions that heads head and boards govern. In simply stating risks, one is acknowledging them. With enrollments precarious, signature programs in jeopardy—in some cases, such as athletics, putting some kids’ opportunities in jeopardy as well—how can one possibly explain either continuing or discontinuing a particular program or mode of operation?
The answer, my friends, is defaulting to transparency. Heads need to listen to their boards and do their bidding to the conscionable extent, but they must also seek input from other professionals in the community, poll other stakeholder groups, and explain—with candor—decisions, even if these are controversial. A strong stand, thoroughly explained, is better understood and even defended than a silent edict generated and passed down without explanation or any sense of there having been consultative input. Lead with health and safety, of course, and then put everything else into perspective against these.
We don’t envy school heads these days, but we need to both understand them and then do what we can to encourage them to step up, embrace and engage their communities (some of whose members, yes, are the loci of their nightmares; we get that), and make the reasoning behind their decisions—the interests and perspectives at play—clear to all. Explain the stakes, explain the risks, explain why each decision is best for the institution and those who work, study there and entrust their children to its care.
No decision in the late fall of 2020 will be perfect, and we must acknowledge ourselves that things will go dreadfully wrong here and there. But decisions made in apparent darkness, in apparent vacuums, and promulgated like leaked bad news on a Saturday night, can only harm the leaders who are making them—with institutions as collateral damage. Alas, “institutions” here encompasses staffs and students.
Above all boards, who like to congratulate themselves for good stewardship and fiduciary responsibility, must permit and assertively encourage the heads they have hired to lead with transparency and to make all appropriate use of the administrative teams charged with making school happen as well as it possibly can.