June 1, 2020

Planning for 2020 - 2021 Edition II

Throughout many areas of the country, the school year has come to a close.  When I've spoken to Heads over the last two weeks, I can hear that a little tension has left their voices, and many have seized the chance to work with their teams to build thoughtful frameworks on which to base their planning for next year.  That is the essential call threaded through this month's newsletter:  before school leaders immerse themselves in the myriad details necessary for a safe approach to the fall, they should take June to create the foundational elements of physical safety, community, equity and programmatic integrity on which they'll hang all of these details. 

The times also call for it.  As one of my children, a notorious last minute planner, told me recently, "Dad, the world has finally caught up with me."  School leaders must shift from the long range planning embedded in the DNA of independent school governance and operations to a more agile, flexible kind of planning that anticipates shifting variables.  I've written more about this crisis than any other subject in my blog catalog, and because conditions have changed so rapidly, some elements of pieces written just a month ago seem quaint or naive. One of the subjects that has not just remained but risen in my concern, however, is the plight of elementary age children and their families in this crisis.  Remote learning is by its very nature inequitable and inadequate for young learners. For ethical and practical reasons (today's kindergartners are tomorrow's seniors, after all), independent school heads must think very hard about how they can start in person schooling as soon as possible for this cohort.