Stepped-up immigration enforcement. School funding debates in statehouses and the U.S. Capitol. A rumor about a school staff member.
When does a school district weigh in publicly? For a superintendent, it’s a difficult line to walk.
There’s no perfect formula, and every community’s needs and expectations are different. But district leaders can set themselves up for success by creating their own process to guide such decisions, said Matthew Montgomery, the superintendent of Lake Forest schools in Illinois.
Having a strategy can help prevent rash decisions and build community trust as people become more familiar with when to expect a superintendent to weigh in, whether it’s about a personnel or political issue, Montgomery said.
In the Lake Forest district, north of Chicago, leaders established a communication decisionmaking matrix so the district wasn’t speaking up randomly on one issue but staying silent the next time something related happened.
Montgomery’s process for establishing that matrix is the subject of a session this week at the annual National Conference on Education hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, in Nashville. AASA Chief Leadership and Learning Officer Kristine Gilmore, is presenting data the association has collected on topics that tend to unite or divide school communities.
Montgomery spoke with Education Week in advance of his session to explain why creating communication strategies before crises arise is so important, and how to do so effectively.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What has your district done to prepare a communication strategy for these kinds of topics?
There is this very real tightrope in leadership as things unfold, and people have so many competing interests and values. Those things can be hard to sift through in the moment, so we created a compass to try and more clearly determine what qualifies for us to take—or not take—different actions. The points are when we need to critically intervene, whether we monitor silently, consider clarifying or engaging, or whether we just let it go completely.
[Editor’s Note: The district’s “compass” is set up like a four-quadrant graph. On one axis, the district measures how much attention a particular issue or incident is receiving in the community. On the other, the district measures how much it could affect or is already directly affecting schools or students.]
What prompted you to create that matrix?
The need stemmed from, I would argue, post-COVID as the political landscape has changed in leadership, regardless of whether you’re in education or not.
We wanted to cut through the noise and be able to figure out in any instance: Are people experiencing this? Can we help? What can we learn from the situation?
Also, saying out loud that there are times when you don’t need to engage was not something I was ever taught or something that I embraced pre-COVID.
As public servants, we want to assuage concerns. We want to listen and improve. But there is a power in silence right now, and sometimes it is the best scenario for your community to let it go or monitor silently and take a minute before you make those decisions.
Can you give an example of a time you chose not to speak out and an example of when you did?
Occasionally there are HR things where there’s not a lot we can share, but there’s pressure from certain pockets of the community to do so.
We are also presented with world or national events that people sometimes want us to weigh in on or take a stand on. Think of leadership through George Floyd, and leadership now through ICE raids. There are things that are happening outside of the schoolhouse that some subsets of the community would rather leadership dial up or dial down communication.
Those become exceptionally difficult to navigate.
I have taken the position that I often monitor silently those events that are outside of the zone of our control and are not directly impacting our educational processes.
But that’s not going to be the right choice for every leader.
There are other colleagues that are exceptional leaders who serve different communities where the expectations are actually different and they take a more vocal approach than I do.
That’s why you need to look at the context in which you’re serving, because this is not one size fits all. You must think through critically what your community needs and have a process and be consistent and transparent.
How have you gotten to know your community to inform these communications decisions?
When you have a deeper knowledge of the people you’re serving, it really helps you analyze each situation better.
I have a superintendent advisory council, which is made up of community members across all the communities I serve. [Lake Forest schools comprise three distinct districts all overseen by the same administrative team.]
I meet with them four times a year and I bring them into schools on visits with me to demystify what’s happening in classrooms.
And then whenever there is an issue that is happening throughout the communities, there’s two-way communication happening where they’re letting me know what’s going on and how it’s affecting our communities, and we can push out information to them to say, “This is our position,” or, “If you need help explaining this, here’s what we can share right now.”
That kind of thing has been a huge value add.
Are there times when it’s been difficult for you to not make a statement on an issue, even if you felt it was the right choice?
Yes, for two reasons.
One is because I believe most educators get into this work as a calling, and want to help and make the experience better for the students they serve and the community they serve.
When you are making the active choice to not engage or to not speak on an issue, it doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings that could be strong.
And, two, there are times where if people had more information, they could better understand your decisionmaking process. But sometimes you’re not able to share the facts that would provide the clarity that would course-correct the narratives of public opinion.
Why do you think it is so important to have these guideposts in place before deciding whether to speak on an issue?
I think people can fall into unfortunate scenarios when they are inconsistent or erratic in sharing news or responding to events that are happening.
There are so many unknowns that, if we can have things to anchor to that are known, it’s very helpful.
Also, some of these decisions can have impacts on your longevity within a district. So if you misstep—and I’m not saying you can’t misstep or make a mistake one time—but if you frequently do not read the tea leaves correctly, it could result in impacting the longevity of your position within that district.
Even if a district has a plan, it doesn’t seem like the decisions are a perfect science. How do you navigate that?
It is an art, but we are trying to apply some science to it, acknowledging that if you have a foundation and you have an agreed-upon framework, when you have to make those decisions, it can be made in such a way where you have solid information and processes established to guide the art.
