Ashley Micklethwaite,
President
Board of Education
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 22nd 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 21st 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.