What hath 9/11 wrought?: In the aftermath, school leaders see shifts in thinking, priorities and curricular emphases

School Administrator, Feb, 2002 by Richard Lee Colvin

When the first plane of death sliced through the World Trade Center tower last September, Daniel Domenech, the superintendent in Fairfax County, Va., was chairing his regular Tuesday morning meeting with about 30 of his top staff members. A note was handed to him advising him of the tragedy and his first thought was that something must have gone terribly wrong by accident.

Word of the second plane, however, brought the meeting to an abrupt halt. Soon after, Domenech learned of a third plane plunging into the nearby Pentagon, where many Fairfax students and school district employees were sure to have relatives. Domenech knew it was time to act. It was time to lead.

"We had to basically get into high gear," he says. "We had to make some very quick decisions."

School administrators from coast to coast had the same reaction. Although police and firefighters and soldiers got more attention, public school leaders also were on the front lines of the response to the attack. They knew their employees, students and communities would look to them for answers. But just as with everyone else they didn't yet know exactly what was happening. That made it difficult to know what to do.

In the East, students were already in school and might be shielded from the news--temporarily. Further west, they were en route to school. And on the West Coast, some students arriving at school already had seen the gut-wrenching images of majestic skyscrapers collapsing while others were oblivious to the fact that their world's predictable orbit had just been thrown irrevocably off kilter.

No matter what time zone they were in, the first thoughts of school leaders-- teachers, principals and superintendents alike--turned to tending to their students. There were sure to be emotional reactions, especially from students with relatives directly involved. As it became clear that these acts were cold and calculated acts of terror, there were security concerns as well. Where would the next plane strike?

In lower Manhattan, teachers and administrators faced an even more immediate set of issues. Schools near the devastated towers had to be evacuated and students rushed to safety, some of them ferried to Staten Island or to New Jersey. In the suburbs of New York and Washington, D.C., the challenge was to figure out what to do with children whose parents might be trapped in the city and unable to get home or whose parents might never come home again. In New York, many telephones, cellular and conventional, as well as Internet connections, were not working. Around Washington, circuits were jammed and so were roads out of the city.

New Directions

As now seems obvious, there was no playbook, no textbook on administration, no school board policy, to turn to for guidance. Sept. 11 and its aftermath caused the best administrators to draw on the same willingness to meet a challenge head-on that prompted many of them to become educational leaders in the first place. And as they did so, it became clear to many that the attacks and the war on terrorism launched in response had the potential to transform schools in as yet unknown ways, just as earlier wars had done.

In one of his first decisions, Domenech ordered the Fairfax County schools be kept open that first day rather than send children home to uncertainty. "We were going to keep the children in our schools, figuring this was the safest place for them to be. We would stay open as long as we had to, to keep kids whose circumstances were such that they couldn't go home."

That decision, made quickly, won the community's gratitude. "People were calling and telling us, 'I can't tell you how grateful I was that Fairfax was staying open because I didn't know when I'd be able to get home,'" Domenech says.

The 160,000-student district closed its schools the next day, as did many in the Washington area. The area's superintendents joined in a conference call with municipal leaders to discuss what should happen next with federal emergency and law enforcement officials. "What we were getting was that the threat wasn't over and that schools had best be closed to keep traffic down and keep roads open," Domenech says.

Halting classes also gave administrators a chance to retool emergency response plans and to craft new security measures. Entry to campuses would be more tightly controlled. Teachers and other staff would be required to display identification, That had to be communicated to students and their parents. So a letter was sent to every family, and announcements were posted on the school district's Web page and broadcast on its television channels.

"There's been a change in our priorities," Domenech says. "The safety and welfare of our students all of a sudden has become paramount. Academics are certainly important and we'll continue to focus on achievement. But the issue of safety and security comes first."

Beyond the Surface

Even as they were making rapid-fire decisions as issues arose, many administrators also realized they had a larger, less tangible role to fulfill, says Robert Feirsen, an assistant superintendent in the Manhasset Public Schools on Long Island. They had to be more than efficient, businesslike managers. They had to convey calm, soothe fears and embody a set of values-all at once, all on the run.