Show Notes: 

Donate to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund here. 

This episode features excerpts from a 2020 SchoolCEO Magazine article: Comunicating in a Crisis. 

Subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.schoolceo.com/subscribe-now/. 

Visit us at schoolceo.com and connect with SchoolCEO on LinkedIn or X/Twitter @school_ceo. 

If you have a story you’d like to share with the SchoolCEO team, email us at eileen@schoolceo.com or schedule a call.

SchoolCEO is powered by Apptegy, the maker of the leading K-12 communications and brand management platform.

Episode Transcript

In the early hours of July 4th, the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country flooded its banks, killing over 100 people, many of them children who were staying at a camp along the river. Nearly 100 people are still missing at the time of this recording. This is a crisis of a magnitude I hope none of you ever experience in your line of work and yet, emergencies ARE inevitable. So how do you face a threat this big—not just to your reputation, but to the health and wellbeing of your community? And how do you minimize the damage it causes your brand?

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. In the days since July 4th, I have been glued to my screen, desperate for updates on the search and rescue mission. And yet, I don’t know anyone personally involved. I bet many of you have been similarly transfixed. So you can understand why, in a crisis, providing as much timely information as you can is so important. 

Before you even experience a crisis, though, you have to consider your internal strategy for effective communication. Make sure that all leaders in the district—those to whom students, parents, community members, and employees turn with questions—know their role in communication.

For more guidance on the subject, we’ve turned to Terilyn Finders, Director of Communications and Legislative Affairs for Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost LLP, a public relations expert with over 30 years of experience providing crisis communications guidance for schools. She compares effective communications to tossing a stone into a pond. When the stone lands, it sends ripples across the water. Like the “stone,” your message should start at a central point, then expand to different stakeholder groups in your community. 

The idea isn’t to withhold information internally (which can quickly cause mistrust) but instead to reach stakeholders systematically.

As information works its way down from local officials through the school system, Finders recommends forming “huddles”—small, regular meetings with key administrators, like the district’s executive cabinet or other relevant leaders. In cases like COVID-19, these members might have included the district nurse and the director of maintenance, for instance.

These huddles should meet once or twice a day at a consistent time to work through new information, forming a path forward. “Huddles can be by phone or in person, but districts need to make sure that the leaders of key functions are touching base to keep information current and consistent,” she explains.

In every huddle, there should also be an established point person for information. “Here is what I see working best: make sure that the district is clear on who their communications point person is,” says Finders. “That person should be a hub for all communication.”

The point person acts as a filter for all communications going out of the district throughout the emergency. So before the district posts on Twitter or sends out an update from the superintendent, the point person will make sure that messaging stays unified.

Once you’re ready to make an announcement, you may need to create several tiers, or “ripples,” to send out information. The members of each ripple are up to you, but Finders provides a basic structure: key administrators, staff and internal groups, then the greater community.

For example, if you are sending a message to all families about how schools will be serving food during school closures, consider first contacting the Board of Education, district and site administration, and your food service division to let them know when you will be issuing the message to families and to whom people may send questions. This helps to clarify each team member’s role in communication and to avoid taking key internal leaders by surprise.

And when you think about staff, don’t forget part-time employees or volunteers. “All of these people should be getting updates from you—not just some of them,” Finders says. “I recommend you begin the school year with a review of communications protocols with internal audiences, clarifying roles and responsibilities,” she says. This is particularly important for site administrators, since they will likely bear the brunt of employee and parent questions. Finally, as you prepare to send a notification out to the greater community, provide a space for engagement: a phone number to call with questions, links to more information, or the contact information of a communications team member. 

Once you have configured your internal to external communication strategy and it’s time to communicate the details of an emergency to the greater community, your goal isn’t only to reduce unease or discomfort—frankly, that isn’t always possible. Your goal is to build your credibility. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Share information consistently. While the speed of your response is important, in an ongoing emergency, consistency creates confidence in you—that you will keep showing up. Even if you have no new information, it’s important to show up and say you have no new information, but that you will share it as soon as you do. 
2. Begin every message by showing empathy for stakeholders. Acknowledging your community’s pain, frustration, or uncertainty in just a sentence or two can help your message land.
3. Be transparent about the process. Great communication explains what you know, what you don’t know, how you’ll find out more information, and how that information will feed into your decision-making process. As I said previously, you don’t have to know all the information, but it’s important to stay honest.
4. Give your audience action steps. From a mental health standpoint, research shows that providing concrete action steps for victims to take helps speed up recovery. For example, messaging during COVID-19 has often included action steps: wash your hands, avoid contact with others, stay six feet apart. Actionable messaging gives citizens a measure of control, even in a frightening and stressful situation. What can they do to protect themselves? What ways can they help their community recover? How can they address their own sadness or fear or anxiety? How can they help a loved one with those feelings? 

If you’re looking for action steps to help the flood victims in Texas, consider donating to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund. I’ve included a link to their website in the show notes. 

Thanks for joining me.