The Thoughts Library
Every month we publish a practical take on school communications — what worked, what backfired, and what to say next time. The whole archive lives here.
Every school leader knows the feeling: You open your inbox and there it is—a frustrated parent, an angry staff member, or someone demanding an explanation for a decision they don’t understand. It is tempting to…
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Artificial intelligence is creating a new challenge for school leaders, and it isn’t simply deciding whether students should be allowed to use it. The bigger challenge may be explaining the decision. Across the country, schools…
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The school year is underway. Teachers are back, students are settling into their routines, and school leaders are already juggling more priorities than they probably care to count. Communications is one of them. The reality…
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The school year is just getting started, and more and more districts are implementing policies that limit—or completely prohibit—student cell phone use during the school day. That makes cell phones a perfect excuse to showcase…
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Some districts get to start the year with a clean slate. Others don’t. Maybe it was a leadership shakeup that played out in the local news. Maybe it was a safety incident, a budget fight…
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Every school posts something on the first day of school. A photo of students climbing off the bus. A smiling principal greeting families at the front door. A classroom full of eager kindergarteners. The caption…
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Most school leaders have a mental checklist of everything that must happen before the first bell rings—staffing vacancies filled, schedules finalized, classrooms prepared, buses routed, buildings ready. Communication often slips toward the bottom of that…
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On the first day of school, it’s often the biggest district in the market that gets the back-to-school front page and TV coverage. New outlets tend to gravitate to the one with the most schools,…
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Somewhere in your school right now — even in the quiet of summer — something good is happening. A teacher is redesigning a unit from scratch because she thinks her students deserve better. A custodian…
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Every summer, schools send families off with backpacks full of information — calendars, contacts, registration reminders, links to online portals. It feels like a thorough handoff. But for a significant portion of your school community,…
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There’s a particular kind of confidence that can get school administrators into trouble. It goes something like this: We have a crisis plan. It’s in a binder somewhere. We’re covered. But when was the last time…
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Every June, school administrators breathe a collective sigh of relief. The buses stop running, the hallways go quiet, and the relentless pace of the school year finally slows. What most don’t realize, though, is that…
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