Nearly 12 months ago I sent an email to parents and to staff at the direction of the Governor of Illinois closing schools indefinitely. I remember vividly the Leadership Team meeting shortly before this when someone on my Leadership Team asked when I thought we would be back in session. When I replied and I told them that I did not think we would be back for the remainder of the school year. The expression on the person’s face was unforgettable. It is maybe the one time in my life I most wished I was wrong.
Fast forward three months or so and schools began to receive guidance on how to re-open schools. This ‘guidance’ sent me into the first (and hopefully only) rage-tweet fest of my life. You may remember, guidance urged schools to re-open, but provided nearly impossible guidelines to follow in order to do so. I was so angry – but we needed to move ahead.
From that point forward, summer was over. It was time to attempt to thread a needle blindfolded and get kids into schools safely. Daily calls, emails, and texts with superintendents from throughout the country that felt more like counseling sessions than brainstorming commenced. But again, we marched forward.
As summer drew to a close, it was time to make key decisions. I am proud of my Board of Education because we approached this decision like we do most others. We identified the priorities and measured our decisions against those. We established four key priorities in what we would attempt to accomplish through the re-opening of schools. The four areas were:
- The health and well-being of our students and staff
- The social-emotional health of our students
- The academic well-being of our students
- Understanding our role within the greater community
These priorities presented a clear and confounding problem. They were at odds with each other. The weight on the shoulders became heavier. There was no way to truly make this work. At least not knowing what we knew then. See, normally, when we work through this process the priorities point us in the direction of the solution. Instead, this time the priorities pointed us in seemingly differing directions.
If we had students come back to school, we could not abide by all health guidelines. Hence, we satisfy objectives 2-4, but fail objective 1.
If we keep students remote, we achieve objective 1, but largely fail objectives 2-4.
These are two examples, but there are many permutations within them. All of them (perhaps not equally) conflicted. We chose the hybrid model to start. I publicly stated it was the ‘best, bad option’ available to us at the time. The weight intensified.
We have stayed flexible since then and have continued to look for solutions and options. Lord knows, we have tried just about every solution one can think of. We have been:
Hybrid
Half-hybrid and half fully in-person
Half fully in-person, quarter hybrid, quarter fully remote
Fully remote
and now
Fully in-person (for anyone who chooses).
We have been agile and have shifted based on the best information we had at any given time. But at each turn, the weight intensified. Most notably as we returned to fully in-person and staff raised concerns over their safety and well-being.
This was/is the hardest stretch of my career. My award-winning and supportive Board had moments of fracture. I never fully believed in any recommendation I provided because in this situation I felt there was no certainty. No matter what I did, it felt OKAY at best. But that was not the core issue.
The core issue was that I was carrying around constant guilt. No matter what I did I felt I was either under-serving students or putting staff and student’s health at risk. And when we were hybrid, a subtle and cruel combination of the two. The irony is that I speak about the importance of letting go of guilt in almost every speech I give – and here I sat, for 11+ saddled with gripping and heavy guilt.
Then . . . yesterday I exhaled.
Any staff member that wanted to be received their second dose of the available vaccine. I know we have seen images on social media of people crying when they receive the vaccine and it may seem hyperbolic or over the top, but knowing how I felt this morning when I woke up I now understand.
I know this is not over. I know that we are not completely out of the woods. But for the first time in almost a year I feel as though I have done right by both my staff and my students.
I know that this comes from a place of luck and privilege as our school community has been relatively unscathed by tragedy throughout the Pandemic. I also know that the fact we were able to receive our second shot already should not be taken for granted. All of that is understood. But, wow . . . it feels like the massive weight I forgot was on my shoulders has been lifted off of me and I could not be more grateful.