Effective Back-to-School Communication in a Turbulent Time

by Joe Donovan, Founder and President of the Donovan Group.

While we find ourselves in unprecedented times, the fundamentals of communication and the way we can engage critical stakeholders now and at the beginning of the school year has not changed. In this article, I introduce you to some resources designed to help you communicate now and over the next several weeks.

As I begin, I would like to make you aware of some return-to-school resources we have on our website, available at www.donovan-group.com/reopen. There, you will find dozens of templates focused on the fall school start. All the resources are free, and if you do not find what you are looking for, please reach out to me and we will create what you need. For many years now, AWSA has retained my services and that of my team at the Donovan Group to provide members with communication services, including crisis communications.

If you ever experience a crisis situation, please contact me and we will provide some advice and any other items you need to address your issue. There is no cost to this service. It's covered by your AWSA membership.

Taking stock

Sometimes situations are so big and create so much turbulence that we must level with ourselves before we can wrap our minds around our communication efforts. So, what makes communicating about COVID-19 so difficult?

We can likely agree that the situation we are dealing with is extremely emotional. Personally, I go from being sad, to angry, to nervous, to frustrated. Sometimes, I feel all these emotions at the same time.

The same is true for your students, families, staff and board members. The same may be true for you. This is all very emotional.

This situation is also quite fluid. Just when we think we have things figured out, the situation and the guidance we receive changes—as does public opinion.

How do we make sense of this giant issue that is both extremely emotional and fluid?

To answer this question, I would like to introduce you to four questions that apply to every communication situation a school district may face:

What is success?
Who are the stakeholders?
What are the messages?
Which tools will we use?

These four questions are universal. Over the years, I have found they are the key questions to ask when the subject matter is especially difficult and the environment in which we are communicating is especially complex.

Let’s take a little time and consider these questions in the context of the pandemic.

Question 1: What is success?

When communicating about big, multi-faceted, challenging issues like COVID-19, it's important to try to create some space—to pull back and gain some perspective. Defining success is a critical part of this effort.

Imagine we are all sitting together two years from now. The COVID-19 pandemic is in the past, as are the immediate issues that are demanding our attention. We feel good about the work we did to address the challenges presented by the virus. We agree that we were successful in our communication work.

Perhaps, you will have known you were successful because you repeatedly heard from people that, despite it all, they felt they received reliable, timely information about how the school year would proceed.

Maybe you know you were successful because your messages got across and because you still hear some of those lines used and parroted back to you.

Perhaps, despite challenges that we cannot now articulate, your school district community became more deeply engaged in the work of the schools.

We could spend a lot of time developing goals. And I encourage you to put yourself in the future and consider what success is, despite all the craziness.

Question 2: Who are the stakeholders?

Next, think about your stakeholders—the groups of people with whom you need to communicate.

You might think that right now, you need to communicate with everyone. And that may be true. However, keep in mind that if you set out to communicate with everyone, you really communicate with no one. We have to define our audiences.

So, where do we start?

I generally start with the school board. After that, the list may include school-level staff, district-level staff, parents and community members. We could go on and on.

Now, we have our goals and we have our stakeholders.

Question #3: What are our messages?

Our next question is: "What do we want our stakeholders to know, understand and feel?"

We talk a lot about messages in communication, and we could probably spend hours talking about how to create effective key messages. However, creating messages can be quite simple. Considering the goals we created earlier, which messages do we need our stakeholders to receive? Usually, we can communicate up to five messages at a time.

Here are a few ideas.

In difficult situations such as this, it’s often a good idea to lead with principles and to explain how decisions are made. Sometimes, we call this the "why behind the what."

With this in mind, you may want to say something like: "The physical and emotional safety and well-being of our students, staff and district community is our first priority."

Your second message could be an "on the other hand" message, and include something like, "within the context this pandemic, we are also committed to having high expectations for the achievement of our students."

Your third message could include something about how, in a very fluid and emotional situation, you will engage the district community when making decisions. An example might be this: "While we cannot know the impact of the pandemic on our school district community this year, we can assure students, parents, staff members and others that we will be as open and forthright as we can be and will seek ways to engage our stakeholders in our decision making."

At this point, we have three messages. Note that these are high-level messages and we have avoided going into too much detail.

If these are your big messages, you can use them repeatedly. For individual items, such as letters to families and staff, you can create bullet points under each of these messages to provide greater detail. You could write individual statements that use the phrase, "so that's why..."

Consider our first message: "The physical and emotional safety and well-being of our students, staff and district community is our first priority." Below this message, you could add sub-points such as the following:

1) (So, that is why) We are requiring all students and staff to social distance and use face coverings.

2) (So, that is why) our outstanding custodial staff will conduct a deep cleaning every night.

3) (So, that is why) student and staff temperatures will be taken as they enter the school.

Question #4: Which communications tools should we use?

After we have created our goals, our list of stakeholders and our messages, our hard work is done. Now, we need to think about the tools we will use to reach our stakeholders with our messages.

As school administrators, you carry an invisible communication toolbox, with many tools you can employ. Common examples include emails to parents or staff members, updates to your school or district website, frequently asked questions documents, social media platforms, news releases, phone calls and videos.

Often, these tools work in conjunction with one other. For example, you’ll want to create a webpage to serve as a clearinghouse for all your COVID-19 information. Use clear navigation and bullets and bolds to make this page readable. When you send an email to families, you can link back to the webpage to direct your readers to where they can find more information.

You will want to use a variety of tools to reach your stakeholders. Not everyone is on social media. Not everyone is on your email list. Not everyone reads the newspaper.

After you have answered the questions outlined above, you can simply assemble the items into a plan and determine what you are going to do first. Follow this for each of your items, ensuring there is alignment with your goals.

Again, we must keep top of mind the fact that the issues we are communicating about conjure emotions. While we are communicating good information, we do so at a time when what we are communicating about continues to change. Continue to do your best to provide clarity, keep your messages simple and remind yourself that we will get through this.

Thank you for all you do for our students. Please let us know if you have any questions or need assistance during these challenging times.

Joe Donovan is the founder and president of the Donovan Group. The Donovan Group is an education-focused communications firm that provides crisis communications support to AWSA members. If you have a crisis situation or a communications-related question, please don’t hesistate to call Joe Donovan at 414-409-7225 ext. 2, or reach out to him via email at [email protected].