Craig Verley

Easter has now come and gone. That means the end of the school year is racing towards you. For most of the school communications world, the coming weeks will be among the busiest of our year. While it tends to become routine after a while. There are always a few surprises and wrinkles.

As our focus tends to shift into the end-of-year organized chaos, are you ready for the unorganized chaos? The last few weeks of a school year are a strange combination for students. The pressure of state testing, end of year events, final exams, and mental fatigue can result in some students doing things they might not normally do or say. Many times, these actions result in the need for you, your team, or a campus to respond and appropriately communicate with parents and the community. Are you ready?

No. You can’t just wave your wand and say; mischief managed.

Now might be a good time to take a few minutes and look over response plans to refresh yourself and to see if there are things that should be updated. We tend to adjust our responses through time and as conditions and technology change. Are those new or adjusted responses reflected in the official plans? Make sure they are so that others have the latest information and guidance. You may think everyone involved at the various campus and administrative levels is aware of adjustments to incident responses. I will guarantee you, not everyone knows.

Your team members and their job duties may have changed. There have likely been changes in other areas of a response plan that you are responsible for that should be adjusted. Most of these may seem like minor things, but in a crunch, they can complicate your district and team’s reactions to events as they unfold.

One of the areas you will want to quickly review are any template parent and community communications that you may have developed. I have a love/hate relationship with emergency communication templates. They can come across as cold and impersonal if someone uses them and just fills in the required blanks. But, the templates can be a great place to make sure you have some consistent language and messaging about: district resources or priorities, response reminders, requests for support, messages of encouragement, etc.

Do you have templates for the multitude of situations that your schools or district may have to deal with? Are they clear, concise, and reassuring when and where they should be?

A few minutes spent now, could save you some headaches in a couple of weeks.