Crisis Communication for School Districts

Matthew recently sat down with Chief Communications Officer, Randy Barber and Superintendent, Dr. Rob Anderson of Boulder Valley School District to talk about crisis communication in schools. This Peachjar Extra Credit video provides school district staff perspectives, tips, and resources. If you want to delve into common terms of crisis communication or looking for additional resources to help you feel confident in your district's crisis communication plan, check out our resource guide. 

A key theme when discussing crisis communication in the video above was training. What it looks like, how to determine Standard Operating Procedure, and how to set your students, staff, and families up for success in the midst of a crisis. 

Preparing for a Crisis: Before 
Relationships are key and building those should be the first step of your crisis communication plan. Be yourself, be personable, and connect with those in your community—the public, staff, guardians, and local PIOs such as first responders and local hospital staff. Talking to local PIOs not only allows you to get to know them, but you get to learn more about how they and their teams operate during a crisis. Additionally, ensure you have templates and template messaging you and your team can follow. Those will serve as building blocks to what you’re going to do. Lastly, before a crisis, you will want to ensure adequate and consistent training. Randy prompts school communicators to consider that communicators are only a part of the picture—you want to empower our leaders, and understand that in a crisis and with the proper training, everyone can be a key part of the process. Think of a lockdown scenario: The impacted school won’t be fielding calls, but likely community members and guardians could be trying to contact the school. Imagine instead of unanswered calls causing panic and frustration, the school district office served as a call center of sorts—one where office staff help filter calls and answer questions. Being prepared for a crisis, providing training, and having Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) will allow for a smoother transition into dedicated roles as a crisis situation develops. 

Some things to consider when preparing for the “before”

• How do people (in your team and community) work?
• What should people expect?
  • When you have a lockdown, what’s the messaging that goes? How does that run?
• How do you (or your district leadership) communicate?
  • What platforms do you and your team use? What are the appropriate channels for various types of communication?
    
  • School districts can have a lot of leaders, a lot of phone calls, and there can very often be confusion during a crisis. One of the goals when creating your communication plan is to ensure your procedures really streamline that communication—what channels will your team use? Who will be responsible for reporting the situation to your school board?
• In order to pull others in to be communicators during a time of crisis, they need to know what they are supposed to do and how to do it. 
  • How do you share the training information, determine who you will recruit for excess communicators, and how will you distribute the latest information across a potentially large group?
• Who will be tasked with monitoring social media?
  • It is important to know what groups are out there in your community, how to be a part of them, whose job it is to monitor and respond in those places when something  happens. 
    

Preparing for a Crisis: During 
First and foremost, the priority should be to take care of the students and families affected by the emergency. While ensuring appropriate actions are being taken, it is important to stay in communication with the necessary teams or leaders—as outlined in your SOP. 

As a crisis situation begins to take shape, communicating necessary information should be timely and as accurate as possible. While Dr. Rob Anderson admits social media reigns undefeated when it comes to speed of communication, he underscores the importance of getting accurate information out first. If you post information about the crisis first, you are able to clearly articulate what is happening and what actionable steps have been taken. On the other hand, if you wait until you have every single detail before posting an update on the crisis, you risk inaccurate information being up already—now you end up in a scenario where you’re now trying to clearly communicate while at the same time dispelling the rumors. All that to say, it is important to find a balance between speed and accuracy. What can you get out—while empowering staff to take necessary action—without being inaccurate? Don’t be afraid to give information in increments as you learn more as well. For example, you could communicate that the situation is developing but kids are safe, and you will post updates as you are able. Also, please do not be afraid of making mistakes—do your due diligence, but always be open to listening to your community. The silver lining of mistakes is they can lead to better relationships with your community and better systems in place to serve them better in the future.

Bottom line during a crisis: Take necessary action to support those impacted, keep a pulse on the situation and communicate as it progresses.

Additional things to consider when preparing 

• How will you determine the balance between accuracy and speed when communicating at the start of a crisis scenario?
  • How do you plan to tackle misinformation? 
  • What are the key points you want to communicate at the beginning of a crisis? What are the details you will plan to provide right away and which ones will you update your community on as the situation progresses? 
• How do you plan to address any mistakes made during the heat of a crisis?
• How will you identify your audience?
  • Will your cast be narrow and grow with the situation?
    • Randy applied a narrow cast to the Marshall Fire communication. The communication team communicated to the impacted geographical zones and as the zones grew larger, the team communicated with additional impacted staff, students, and families.
  • Or will you initially cast a broad net? Or even apply a layered approach?
    

Preparing for a Crisis: After 
Okay, so the crisis has passed…now what? Randy and Rob recommend leaning into servant leadership. Just because the crisis is over does not mean your community, families, or staff no longer need support. It is a crucial step for crisis communication planning to consider what happens after the crisis. Consider questions such as these when preparing your crisis communication plan: 

• How are you going to support those impacted still after the crisis? 
• What is your plan for the people in the community that want to help?