When Crises Hit: A Blueprint for School Communications
So far in 2025, Hennes Communications has worked with 30 school districts, schools and education organizations navigating crises ranging from sexual misconduct to labor disputes, social media backlash and book bans. And a new school year beckons.
Schools have always been in the public eye and vulnerable to reputation-challenging problems. The primary mission is education. But schools also serve as transportation companies, food service providers, athletic organizations, cultural and arts institutions, building owners – and more. Public schools perform all those services using taxpayer dollars, which naturally means more intense public scrutiny.
Beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic and continuing today amid the never-ending culture wars, school leadership has faced unprecedented challenges.
And, driven in large part by social media, the challenges have come amid one of the most tense, socially and politically charged atmospheres imaginable.
Effective crisis response is about what you do, not what you say. A school can’t communicate its way out of a crisis. School leaders must act their way out and then communicate those actions by telling the truth, telling it first and fast, sharing as much as privacy allows, and speaking directly to the people you care most about – your parents, students, teachers and staff. The best prepared schools invest in a crisis communications plan, complete with drafted messages, roles, protocols and social media guidance, to safeguard their most valuable asset: reputation.
Each situation requires its own communications strategy, tools and tactics, but there are basic principles and best practices that apply.
Effective crisis communications: The best practices
The serious issues and potential controversies we’ve been engaged recently to handle have included:
- Sexual misconduct allegations involving teachers
- Sexual misconduct allegations involving students
- Financial shortfalls and budget cuts
- Tense labor negotiations
- Superintendents facing no confidence votes from teachers
- Superintendents and school boards attacked on social media by parents
- Property tax disputes
- Transportation issues
- Challenges from charter school incursions
- Workplace discrimination allegations
- Controversial books in school libraries
- Controversial speakers invited to appear at school events
- Diversity, equity and inclusion issues
The common thread among all? School leadership must talk about it. The issue can’t be ignored. It isn’t going away. And those key stakeholders schools care about the most – teachers, staffers, parents and students – are waiting to hear what’s going to be done.
At Hennes Communications, we depend on our Damage Control Playbook and its five simple concepts:
- Tell the truth.
- Tell it first
If you don’t, someone else will. - Tell it all
Because if you don’t, someone else will. We realize that sometimes, for very legitimate reasons, you can’t tell it “all.” Student privacy must be paramount, for example. And as we experienced in communicating about a pandemic, you also can’t know it “all.” Change will happen. Tell people that. One more important caveat: Don’t provide any information until you know it’s true to the absolute best of your ability to know that in the heat of the moment. One of the most damaging errors, from a communications and reputation standpoint, is to have to walk back “facts” that you’ve shared with the public. - Tell it fast.
Tell it to the people whose opinions matter most to you. Your teachers, staff, students and parents are eager to hear from you.
And “no comment” is no answer. Tempting as it may be, “no comment” equals a guilty plea in the Court of Public Opinion. Because, after all, if you have a story to tell, why aren’t you telling it?
An insurance policy for your reputation:
the crisis communications plan
Your greatest uninsured asset is the reputation you’ve spent years building. Build insurance for your reputation and prepare for the worst by developing a comprehensive crisis communications plan.
Districts and schools are required to develop comprehensive emergency management plans meeting state law requirements. While communications with emergency services, staff, parents and other parties is a key part of these plans, districts often give short-shrift to the communications piece.
At its essence, a crisis communications plan establishes who says what, who you’re saying it to, when and how.
When working with school districts to develop a crisis communication plan, we place a great deal of emphasis on the “what” – messages for your most important audiences that have been approved by the superintendent, principals, legal, human resources, communications – by all the key players – for a variety of crisis scenarios.
We identify the crisis scenarios by conducting a vulnerability audit with schools. We gather in one room with the heads of different departments and disciplines that cut across the district and ask, what keeps you up at night? What potential crisis are you worried about?
An hour or so of brainstorming usually yields several dozen potential crises.
We then rate which of those crises are most likely to happen. From that most likely list, we choose the most potentially damaging – to your day-to-day operations and your reputation.
The result is about a dozen potential crises that are most likely to happen and most damaging.
Then, we write messages designed to talk about the crisis immediately, as it’s happening, with accompanying social media posts, particularly for X and Facebook.
Having a crisis communications plan positions you to react quickly when the crisis hits because you don’t have time then to think about what you want to say and get your leadership team to approve it.
Your school community is waiting to hear from you. These planned, approved messages mean your voice is out there in those crucial early cycles of a crisis. They establish you’re working on the problem. And we’ve found they are crucial in protecting and maintaining your reputation.
The plan also establishes a crisis communications team, with complete contact info – including mobile phones – with backups for the primary contacts, because crises don’t happen at convenient times. They happen the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend. They happen at 8 a.m. on an otherwise quiet Saturday. And they happen while your crisis team leader is on vacation.
This plan includes a clear delegation of responsibilities for each member of the crisis communications team, along with protocols and procedures for activating the crisis communications team, with immediate first, second and third steps.
The plan also includes a section on social media, with instructions for use of social media, guidelines for monitoring, etc.
Want to survive a crisis? Have a plan for doing so before the crisis.
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Thom Fladung is managing partner at Hennes Communications. Reach him at fladung@crisiscommunications.com and 216-213-5196.