Joplin Schools – Beyond Resiliency in Education

Ashley Micklethwaite,

President

Board of Education

Joplin, Missouri

It is difficult to believe our community changed forever just six months ago.  In some regards, it seems like a lifetime has passed.  As a Board of Education, how do you recover when half of your student body is directly impacted by an EF-5 tornado?  How do you recover when ten of your district’s buildings are damaged or totally destroyed?  You move!  You move fast and keep your focus!  We have had sorrows, challenges, victories and we always keep our focus on the children and the future.

In the frenetic early days after the May 22^nd storm, our first priority was to locate our children and staff.  Staff members, Board members and volunteers poured into our makeshift command center and began calling, e-mailing and using social network sites to find our school families.  Within five days, we found all 7,547 students and 1,100 staff members.   With joy also came sorrow; we lost six students and one staff member in the storm.  To honor their lives and the lives of all of the people who died that evening, we vowed to start school on time.  We believe schools are the heart of the community.  The most important thing we could do was to reestablish some sense of normalcy to help our community rebuild.  Many people have asked, “What did the Board of Education think when Dr. Huff announced school would start on time?”  Our collective thought was “Yes, we must.” The Board of Education didn't ask how or how much money. We just knew it had to be done.

Starting school on time was a challenge for which this team was positioned.  The Board gave Dr. Huff and his top-notch team the authority to use emergency powers to work hand-in-hand with the Board of Education to make quick but well-researched decisions.  Having school open on time was essential to the long-term recovery of our community.  The Board of Education set five priorities on which every decision would be based: (1) Children, (2) School employees, (3) Community, (4) Education and (5) Facilities.  Children are and will be our number one priority.   Their health, safety, basic needs and educational needs now and in the future are at the forefront of our decisions. Of course education is always a top priority but it isn’t the number one priority. Our belief is this; if our children’s, employees’ and community’s basic needs are not met, meaningful education cannot occur.

We believe meaningful education can happen most anywhere where there are great educators.  We knew we had great educators.  We had tremendous help from volunteers all over the country. Now all we needed was space to replace two elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, a technical school and repair five other school buildings.  Challenging, yes, but we met the challenge head-on. High school in a mall?  Yes.  Middle school in an empty warehouse?  Yes.  Oh, and by the way, we need to have summer school too!  The Board of Education believed in the vision of the team.  We also believed that the best place for our kids throughout the summer was not in a debris field or in a hotel room.  We decided to not only start summer school but to expand summer school and offer transportation.  This was a challenge for us, but it was the right thing to do for the community and for our children.  School is what they needed. 

But not just school in a mall or warehouse or summer school activities.  Our challenge was to offer not just good education and a normal environment but go above and beyond what was expected.  Our philosophy was that we wanted to keep children with the friends and teachers they knew to the best of our ability given our challenge of finding suitable locations for 54% of our student enrollment.  This created a tremendous challenge of busing students from all over the area, including out-of-district displaced students.  We had the opportunity to focus on implementing 21^st century learning environments.  We had long dreamed of implementing a one-to-one initiative.  What better time to implement the plan than after most of the high school textbooks were destroyed?  We also had the challenge, opportunity and duty to help our students and faculty heal from the trauma of May and the continued stress of everyday life in a post-disaster community.  Staff received specialized training in trauma response and counselors are on hand to help those who need extra help in dealing with their grief and stress.  We are very concerned about the long-term stress of families and, for the first time, will be offering a Winter Break school opportunity for families.  For some of our children, the safest place they can be is in school.

We are now planning for our future.  Challenges also offer great opportunities.  We can build state-of-the-art schools to meet the needs of an ever-changing global economy.   We can share our story so other communities can learn from us, build safer schools and, most importantly, build relationships.

How do you prepare as a Board of Education or a school district for a disaster of this magnitude?  Start now!  I’m sure you have your disaster plans, where to take children for safety, your safety committee, etc…  But are you really prepared?  Does your Board of Education work well as a team?  Do you trust one another and respect one another?  Do you trust your Superintendent and his/her team?  Do your Superintendent and all the staff, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, nurses, custodians believe that every child deserves the best education every day?  Do you as a Board govern, or do you try to administrate?  Do you have a dynamic, flexible, strategic, long-range plan that the entire community helped develop?  Do you personally know your City Manager and your City Council Members?  Does every school have businesses, human service organizations and faith-based partners that meet regularly to discuss what the children need, what the school needs and how the children and the school can give back to the community?  Our greatest victory wasn't starting school on time.  Our greatest victory was that we were prepared.  We had all of these things in place prior to May 22, 2011.  Our greatest challenge now, as we look to the future, is maintaining what we have, building upon those strengths and keeping our focus on top priorities.

We are humbled by the outpouring of support from educators and communities.  We thank you.  We could not have done what we've done these past six months without your support.  We have an obligation to all of those who have supported us during our time of need and to our children to be resilient.  But resiliency is defined as “returning to an original form after being bent.” Our children, all children, deserve better.  The May tornado was transformative.  Our challenge now is to transform education.  It is our hope that as we rebuild and recover, our educational system and community will be better than before.  This we believe and this we will work toward.