Navigating a Pandemic With Moral and Intellectual Leadership

Steve McCammon (standing), CEO of the Schlechty Center in Louisville, Ky., leads participants through a practice session on discussion techniques during a Superintendents Leadership Network Institute in April. PHOTO COURTESY OF STEVE MCCAMMON

Red Steagall is one of America’s great cowboy poets and songwriters. He’s a man who emphasizes the importance of knowing where you’re going and how you plan to get there.

In his song “The Wagon Tongue,” he describes how late at night on long cattle drives, the cook would point the tongue of the chuck wagon toward the North Star. Tomorrow might be cloudy, the cook would explain. Without landmarks — trees or mountains — on the trail, cowboys easily could point the herd in the wrong direction. As one chorus rings out:

“’Cause life is like a grassy sea, the trail ain’t always plain
One may lead to pleasure and another lead to pain
But you’ll never lose direction, and you’ll know just where you are
If you’ll always point your wagon tongue toward that old North Star.”

In the pain-filled past two school years that we have all experienced, it is clear, in the face of a terrible pandemic, the best leaders understood their North Star to be commitment to the moral and intellectual foundations of the school district enterprise.

This overarching lesson affirms what we at the Schlechty Center, which I lead, and we at the National Superintendents Roundtable, where I am executive director, have collectively learned in working with districts and in networking with leaders across the nation: At its heart, education is a moral enterprise.

The superintendents and boards of education that understand this have a marker pointing them in the right direction, even amid the darkest nights of the soul.

Culture’s Importance

Over this past year, a series of articles written by members of the National Superintendents Roundtable covered topics including duty of care, monetary concerns, importance of student connection and the value of communication. (The articles were published by Education Week under the banner “Leadership Lessons From the Kitchen Table.”) I read them with great interest.

What strikes me is not just the actions of these leaders during the pandemic, but rather the realization that these leaders’ actions were not part of a well-orchestrated strategic plan.

Culture, it is said, trumps strategic plans. These leaders are clear about what they believe and clear about the direction of the organizations they lead. Even amid chaos in a context that lacked, and still lacks, consensus, they leaned into their districts’ culture and direction, using them as the North Star for making difficult decisions.

To paraphrase what one thoughtful leader shared recently on social media, “The pandemic did not develop character. It demonstrated it.”

District Direction

Much has been written about “The Great Resignation,” a trend showing that workers in many industries began voluntarily leaving their jobs months into the pandemic. The National Superintendents Roundtable, under the direction of former executive director James Harvey, published the “Quitting Report” in September 2021. In it, superintendents responded to this question: Have you ever considered quitting the field during the great challenges of the ongoing pandemic?

The profound challenges superintendents face were well-detailed in the report. They include personal threats of violence, the politics of the pandemic, personal health and wellness issues, and staffing crises. However, the real insight was that most leaders chose to push forward because of the important work at hand for their children and local communities. They were committed. My colleagues and I have heard amazing stories of how teachers and principals responded during the pandemic by reaching out to their communities and families.

But it is the superintendent, with the support of the board, who is responsible for the school district’s direction, what we at the Schlechty Center think of as “directional systems.” Our founder, Phillip Schlechty, defined directional systems as “systems through which goals are set, priorities are determined and, when things go awry, corrective actions are initiated.”

Schlechty never drove cattle, but because he understood the importance of being clear about district direction, he understood the metaphor of the wagon tongue and shared it often. I am not sure he would have anticipated school leaders being pulled in so many directions, on so many difficult issues fraught with political passion, such as our nation witnessed these past few years.

However, he would have had no difficulty understanding the need for leadership firmly anchored in the moral and intellectual dimensions of schooling amidst a national crisis. To him, that’s what school leadership was all about.

School and district leaders who are overly focused on bureaucratic matters ask the wrong questions. Relying on power and control, compliance and lines of authority, they worry about who is in charge instead of where they are going. They are concerned with such questions as these: Who’s in charge of what? Who decides? How are things decided? What are the standards of performance? Who judges the performance? And what metrics are used in reaching these judgments?

Alternately, leaders committed to the moral and intellectual foundations of their organizations ask a different set of questions: What are the core values and beliefs we want our organizations to embrace and uphold? What accomplishments will make us most proud? What will it take to satisfy those we intend to serve? 

Other key questions are: What kind of organization are we, and what do we want to become? How do we identify, import and develop the knowledge we need to engage in the kinds of continuous innovation required to survive and thrive in a constantly changing environment? How will we know when we succeed, and how will we measure success?

Moral Duty

Organizational leaders who are accustomed to exploring issues of values and belief — instead of debating who’s in charge — know instinctively where to turn when a nearly unimaginable crisis strikes. They are skilled at reframing problems into opportunities.

In observing what superintendents do, we at the Schlechty Center see patterns that we refer to as the Pillars of the Superintendent as Moral and Intellectual Leader. While it’s possible the superintendents who responded most effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic were unaware of these pillars, we have no doubt their leadership during this once-in-a-century crisis reflected the principles embedded in the pillars.

Outstanding superintendents perched on the moral foundation of the profession insist on a duty of care to others. They continuously clarify their vision of the future, calling for collaboration with peers, insist that trust in their organization and in their people is the key to success, and stand up to harsh personal criticism for doing the right thing because they know it is the right thing to do. 

Henry Pettiegrew (right), superintendent in East Cleveland, Ohio, joined young students from the district’s Prospect Academy as they searched for sunspots through a telescope. PHOTO COURTESY OF EAST CLEVELAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Two Exemplars

While I could highlight so many leaders who rose to the occasion these past few years, two come to mind who truly embodied the moral and intellectual leader. One is Michelle Reid, who found herself facing the decision to be the first school district in the nation to close schools due to the sudden appearance of COVID-19 when she was superintendent of Northshore School District in Washington. She had no roadmap and no precedent to guide the difficult decision.

According to Reid, who now leads Fairfax County, Va., Public Schools, “We (in Northshore) had 72 hours lead time to make the call. Our priority was the safety and support of our students, staff and the families they went home to at the end of the day.”

The actions of superintendent Henry Pettiegrew were another powerful and common example. He leads the East Cleveland City School District, one of the least technologically connected and highest-poverty areas in Ohio. Not surprisingly, the district faced huge challenges to create the infrastructure to deal with the state’s executive order to close schools in March 2020.

In addition to providing shelter, food and other supports to students and families, Pettiegrew said his school system had to “blaze a trail to provide the capacity for our students to learn remotely and access the basic resources each child needed during this unprecedented moment. We transformed from copying hard-copy packets … to a robust and rich remote-learning experience in a span of several months.”

Many examples point to superintendents who found themselves at odds with their own school boards and communities over such issues as masking and the overall decision to close schools for virus mitigation purposes. In some cases, leaders made the moral decision to resign rather than accept putting their students and staff in harm’s way during the height of the raging pandemic.

Lying awake at night worrying about their community and their students, superintendents know exactly where their district’s wagon tongue is pointed. They are clear about their North Star. As the last two years have shown, it has made all the difference.

STEVE MCCAMMON is president and CEO of the Schlechty Center and executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable in Louisville, Ky. Twitter: @drstevemac1. An earlier version of this article appeared in the National Superintendents Roundtable newsletter.