One of the primary goals of our application for the Circulos Super School was to create a school whose primary pursuit would be to develop instructional practices and student skillsets that would prepare graduates to thrive in our modern, hyperconnected world.   To accomplish this, we needed a team that could innovate at a high level, who would be nimble enough to provide flexible structures for learning on an ongoing basis.  This type of flexibility is surprisingly difficult to achieve in practice.  The “dailyness” of school screams for structure and predictability.  The systems employed in most classrooms are created precisely with the aim of mitigating uncertainty.

But uncertainty is the name of the game in our modern world.

Admittedly, the past few weeks have introduced a level of uncertainty that even the most flexible amongst us probably find unsettling.  If anything, this has served as a sobering reminder about where we need to take our educational institutions if we hope to provide meaningful, authentic learning for students regardless of their living circumstances.  Last week I posted about the challenge of the digital divide – a very real challenge for students living in poverty in places where the digital infrastructure simply does not meet the standard.  Yet even when students have a reliable connection, there is the additional question about what quality learning looks like in the digital space.

Across the Santa Ana Unified school district, we have seen examples of teachers and administrators who have quickly mobilized resources and tools to provide a meaningful platform for student learning.  This is particularly the case with our Circulos team.  Early into our school closures, the team launched a series of protocols for connecting regularly with students – “virtual circles,” if you will.  The team even posted a screen shot of their team meeting on social media, a la Brady Bunch, which went viral and was featured by both our local county office of education, and by the XQ institute.

This weekend, the team announced a series of online professional development opportunities available to teachers across the district.  The offerings focus on things like “Branding and Designing your Virtual Space,” “Cultivating Voice through Student Blogs,” and “Virtual Circles: Tools and Best Practices.”  The school’s motto of “come join our circle” extends to professionals who desire to up their digital game.  A big part of our initial pursuit of the XQ grant was precisely to demonstrate our ability to share the learning from Circulos across schools and departments within a large school district.  It’s very satisfying to see that happening in practice.

When I joined Santa Ana Unified almost five years ago, the district was in the midst of a massive “Access for All” campaign.  Over the course of two years, we went from fewer than 10,000 computing devices for over 50,000 students, to 1:1 Chromebooks for all students grades 3-12, and classroom sets of iPads for lower elementary classrooms.  Our 21^st Century Learning and Learning Innovations with Technology teams worked to systematically build capacity to meaningfully integrate technology into the classroom.  Hundreds of teachers received Google certification, and we piloted ground-breaking web-applications to provide daily learning feedback to students.  At the same time, our technology services department made tremendous investments in the network infrastructure.  We rolled out Canvas LMS, adopted Google Classroom, and were on the cusp of digital badging.  We joined the League of Innovative Schools and had numerous schools on the Getting Smart list of schools to visit.  It felt like Santa Ana was on the cutting edge of the digital revolution in schools.

Over the next two years, we distributed over 1000 hotspots to try to fill in the gap with families with poor or no internet service at home.  In our most recent surveys, nearly 90% of families indicated they had access to the internet at home, up signicantly from when the Access for All campaign began.  While we were not focused on technology integration as we had been in the past, we were still making efforts to diminish the digital divide for students and familes.

And then COVID-19 closed our schools.

The closing of schools brought into immediate and sharp focus the remaining gap in access.  For those families without internet access at home, the connection to school was largely shut off.  Yes, our teachers are reaching out via telephone.  Yes, we’ve developed and distributed learning enrichment packets for families.  But a packet and a phone call are simply not the same as the daily interactions, access to software applications, and ongoing feedback that come with a solid internet connection.  We’ve also found that the quality of those internet connections also varies – broadband accessibility in central Santa Ana is uneven.  We have a lot of families reporting that connectivity has been a challenge during the school closure.  Even for those with internet access, connection speeds are sometimes slow and frustrating. 

For a district that serves such a large number of students living in poverty or homeless, distance learning is much more complicated than simply sending home a device.  I probably had two dozen people send me a link last week from a local internet provider offering free internet for 60 days.  Of course when we did some additional research, it became clear that families would have to provide billing information and that the trial period would automatically roll over into a monthly charge.  When you work with a community like Santa Ana that has come to trust our recommendations, we have to vet offers carefully.

We still don’t know how long schools will remain closed, or the long-term impact that the COVID pandemic of 2020 will have on our schools.  What is certain is that the digital divide is still a major challenge to students and families who want and need equal access.

It’s been a little while since I last rode my bike to work.  Before joining executive cabinet, I bike commuted at least 2-3 days each week, but the pace and demand of my job has made that increasingly difficult during the past couple of years.  Now, I typically drop off my oldest two kids at school on my way to work, and ride my bike only on rare occasions.

I miss it.  I love riding through Santa Ana on a school day.  Being at street level I get to see families and students making their way to school.  I ride past the tamale carts where students grab a last second chance for breakfast.  I see countless moms holding hands with their little people as they cross intersections, or pushing strollers with fussy babies inside.  Santa Ana is a walk to school kind of place, and the city is most alive as students and families make their way to and from campus.  It’s as predictable as the ocean tide, predictably filling up the streets with humanity each morning and afternoon, all in the name of education.

After all, Santa Ana really is all about school.  “Education First” was the city motto for nearly 20 years.  Amongst large urban school districts, Santa Ana boasts one of the highest daily attendance rates in the country.  Our schools are embedded and integrated into our daily life and consciousness.  Even in the summer our schools are kept busy with enrichment and intervention programs and activities across the city.  We have more students in summer school than the vast majority of districts have students.  We have Wellness Centers on every campus, connecting families with educational opportunities and resources from a wide variety of community partners and service-providers.  Food pantries set up shop each week in our parking lots, and many nights and weekends are filled with district sponsored arts and athletics events.  All of it happens in the small geographic footprint of Santa Ana that we call home.

But this morning, things were quiet.  Schools are closed.  We are still operating food distribution centers around the city to ensure our students have access to food, a critical service for our most vulnerable families.  We’ve rushed to print enrichment materials and distribute any available hotspots during the shutdown for the small percentage of students who do not have internet access of any kind at home.  Essentials functions at the district office continue.

But those operations are a far cry from a normal day in Santa Ana.  It felt a bit eerie riding through the city, practically by myself with exception to the light car traffic on the streets.  It was a sobering reminder of how central to life schools are in a place like Santa Ana.   

This past Saturday was our 4^th annual district Speech and Debate intermediate school championship tournament.  At the end of the day, I sat in a packed auditorium, the largest in the school district, as students and parents excitedly awaited the announcement of the champions who would be traveling to the national tournament in New Mexico later this year.  The energy was palpable. Anyone can tell you that in SAUSD, Speech and Debate has become one of our prized programs, with championships and recognitions at both the state and national level.

Earlier that same Saturday, I found myself walking from venue to venue in downtown Santa Ana for our annual Boca de Oro festival of literary art and culture.  We had hundreds of students performing, sharing their creativity and talents with our Santa Ana community.  The outward celebration of our students’ collective brilliance masked the huge logistical lift of making the festival a reality.  Our coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts, Robyn MacNair, could certainly tell you some stories about just how hard it has been to take the festival from concept to reality.

These types of celebrated programs share a similar origin story.

New initiatives must grow through a start-up phase, when success is not guaranteed and the stakes feel high.  When we hired Sal Tinajero as a program specialist to launch Speech and Debate, for example, he was given a small budget and few systems for guidance.  During those early days and weeks, every small hiccup felt like it might derail the vision.  How are we going to hire coaches?  What about schools that don’t want to participate?  Where do advisors fit in the collective bargaining agreement?

One by one, the team collaborated and brainstormed and tried to move the work forward.  There were moments when we had to circumvent established bureaucratic protocols that simply couldn’t address our needs – and certainly not in a timely manner.  At times, we had to create entirely new systems and processes.  It felt a bit dangerous.  We reminded each other to just keep moving forward.

It takes vision and a lot of hard work to bridge the start-up gap.  You have to push through both self-doubt and resistance.  You have to press against the inertia of such a large bureaucracy.  I have watched this process play itself out over and over again.  It’s the difference between those projects and programs that thrive, and those that quietly die off and disappear.  The redesigned film academy and studio at Santa Ana High School was nearly derailed a half-dozen times, but now stands as one of the premier learning spaces in the district.  Our Círculos superschool project started off as little more than a community design team, and has led to one of the most ambitious instructional programs in the country.

Saturday afternoon felt incredibly rewarding.  Seeing the exceptional work of team members who had a vision for what our kids can do, and then persevered to see it through, brings me tremendous satisfaction.

Just a few weeks into my new job as a high school principal, I pulled into the school parking lot following a central office meeting to find all of my students evacuated from the school building.  Apparently, there had been a trash can fire in the bathroom.  Classic.  This happened three weeks later, again on the morning of my regularly scheduled central office meeting.  What had started as an isolated incident was morphing into a crisis, and my credibility as a leader was increasingly on the line.   

Nobody wants a dumpster fire.  At best it’s a crisis situation that monopolizes your limited time.  At worst, it spirals into a mishandled incident that can cause injury and damage, draw negative attention, and lead to prolonged investigations and lawsuits.  The irony is that a momentary distraction or incident, if not addressed appropriately, may become an ongoing saga.  Spend too little time addressing the crisis, and your leadership will come under fire, and sometimes may even cost you your job.

Use Your Time Wisely

When a crisis hits, it can quickly take priority over whatever good work was previously planned.  Data chats are postponed.  Classroom walkthroughs are cancelled.  A crisis takes us away from our strategic priorities while simultaneously threatening to insert anxiety, panic, and additional stress.  My advice to school leaders is to always schedule the most essential, transformative work first thing each morning.  Getting priority work done before a crisis situation has the chance to emerge is always the best strategy.  Start the day off in classrooms.  Schedule time for strategic thinking and planning early in the day.

Be Prepared

Crisis situations, while both unfortunate and distracting, are inevitable in the work of leading a school.  It pays to plan ahead and to take seriously the opportunities for practice and discussion before the crisis hits.  Know the proper protocols.  Seek out guidance and support when you have questions about how to handle different scenarios.  When the crisis hits, you’ll typically find yourself in the role of incident commander, and your poise and guidance will be essential.

We’re incredibly blessed in Santa Ana Unified to have specialized teams – police services, crisis response teams, clinical counselors, specialized maintenance crews – to assist schools and school leaders when a crisis occurs.  Not all school leaders have those types of resources just a text message away.  So, you need to know what resources you do have access to, and how to mobilize them when needed.   

Communication is Key

One of the most important elements of crisis preparation is clear and timely communication.  Even in cases where you get the immediate crisis response right, you might fumble the communication and find yourself on the defensive with parents and other stakeholders.  Ironically, just at the moment you need to get the message right is also the moment when time is short and the stakes are high.  Having communication templates at the ready that address a range of common issues and incidents can save a school leader valuable time when a crisis hits.  It’s also essential that you have an understanding of how to manage your channels of communication.  Mass e-mails, robocalls, and hard copy letters are often part of the communication strategy.  Yet many situations develop after hours, when key staff who typically handle communication distribution may have already gone home for the day.  You need backups to your communication strategies to ensure you can get the message out promptly.

Build Capacity

We say that school safety is a top priority, but the proof is in our calendars and budgets.  Are we identifying time and resources to provide meaningful planning and professional development for staff in matters of safety?  Our school board and community have clearly identified safety as a district priority.  As a result, we instituted a safety day across the school district, with instructional videos and discussion prompts as part of an effort to build our collective capacity to handle crisis situations.  We have an active risk management team and police services department that constantly push to keep issues of safety and security on the learning agenda for staff.