Lessons from crisis recovery in schools: how hurricanes impacted schools, families and the community

Leading Schools and Districts in Times of Crisis

“…This monitoring requires gathering of continuous data and feedback from stakeholders, making high-functioning communication systems crucial (Boin et al, 2013). For example, in their chronicling of the immediate response to a series of hurricanes in schools in southern Louisiana, Howat et al (2012) describe systems to assess damage and the need for repairs, to communicate between principals and central office, and to gather information about flooding in the community and other challenges that may threaten reopening or keep students out of school.…”

“…During this time, information is often piecemeal and perhaps conflicting, requiring leaders to engage in sensemaking in order to reduce confusion and effectively manage members of the school/district community (Weick, 1993). Communicating the crisis, its consequences, and the school's or district's response transparently-internally and externallybuilds trust and promotes productive engagement with the response from the community (Fernandez & Shaw, 2020;Howat et al, 2012). An emphasis in this communication is "meaning making" for stakeholders, shaping a central narrative or message about the crisis, its causes, and its coming resolution that clarifies, encourages, and inspires (Kitamura, 2019).…”

“…The last phase of effective crisis management is intentional learning from the crisis and the organization's crisis experience. Data and feedback gathered during each phase provide leaders the means to understand the factors that caused or exacerbated the crisis, what strategies the organization might have taken to mitigate or prevent it, the effectiveness of the crisis management plan, and success of actions taken to respond to and recover from the crisis (Fener & Cevik, 2015;Howat et al, 2012). Careful analysis of this information by the leadership team in the school or district-or perhaps a work group tasked with close consideration of the organization's crisis response-can identify changes that need to be made to organizational systems and procedures with the goal of more effective future mitigation/prevention and preparedness (Coopman & Young, 2009).…”

“…Careful analysis of this information by the leadership team in the school or district-or perhaps a work group tasked with close consideration of the organization's crisis response-can identify changes that need to be made to organizational systems and procedures with the goal of more effective future mitigation/prevention and preparedness (Coopman & Young, 2009). For example, in their case of hurricane recovery, Howat et al (2012) describe how participants learned numerous lessons from the storms that they could apply when later ones hit, from how critical it is to maintain inventory records for requesting federal assistance to the need for multiple backups for essential digital student records, to the importance of having students and staff take home personal items in advance of a coming storm to make their loss less likely. A potential model for systematically gathering and analyzing data to promote organizational learning that schools and districts can use is the U.S. Army's "After Action Reviews," which assess what was supposed to happen, what happened, and what accounts for the differences (Fullan, 2006).…”

“…As open systems, schools constantly are affected by external forces that they must organize themselves to manage (Scott & Davis, 2007); crises can represent acute cases of such forces. 1 This research has investigated the crisis response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (Brickman et al, 2004;Ingenito, 2004;Weist et al, 2002); to hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina (Elliott & Taylor, 2006;Howat et al, 2012;Simmons & Douglas, 2018); to other natural disasters, such as wildfires and tornadoes (Bishop et al, 2015;Kitamura, 2019); and to school shootings (Connolly-Wilson & Reeves, 2013;Kennedy-Paine et al, 2013;Zenere, 2013). These studies document that some school leaders approach crises in ways that mitigate their consequences and speed recovery.…”