We talk with Dr. Matthew Montgomery, Superintendent at Revere Local Schools, in Richfield, Ohio.

They are fully opened up, unlike his counterpart up in northeast Ohio, Dr. Lloyd, who went fully remote. Here is a link to that episode.

He gives us a little perspective of what superintendents are going through, how they're handling being fully open, where their preparations are for being online if they need to go online, and the general challenges that they're now facing in this era of COVID-19.

School districts are obviously facing tremendous pressure.  School administrators have been under tremendous pressure since March with very little leadership at the gubernatorial and national level, as well as giving them kind of the support that they need.

This hits the schools particularly hard.

And this has put tremendous pressure on our school administrators. So we agree with Dr. Montgomery's suggestion that a little kindness does goes a long way when there is any discussion between parents and stakeholders, and school districts, administrators and teachers.

We spoke with Dr. Montgomery in an earlier episode about about how to manage a school construction project.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigates success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jim Lloyd, Superintendent of the Olmsted Falls City Schools.

What we cover is how their school district is handling the COVID-19 crisis that is affecting public education.

He has a fairly unique story about going fully remote, and the fact that he needs to hold a standard to inspire and empower the district to what they call the "Triple-A" experience.

OFCS is committed to providing our students with a comprehensive“Triple-A” experience that develops and fosters the district's Academic, Artistic and Athletic growth.

And obviously, though they are doing it differently, that expectation has not changed.

And learn what a "Blizzard Bag" is!

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigates success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

Chris McCully, Superintendent at EHOVE Career Center (Milan, OH), is our guest.

EHOVE Career Center is a leading career tech school in Milan Township that offers advanced training for high school and adult education students in Erie, Huron and Ottawa Counties. The career center serves 16 school districts in the northwest Ohio area.

In this era of COVID-19, vocational education, and how it is done, has taken a real hit. They're having to innovate on the fly.

I get to talk with Chris about the impact they're seeing there and how viable career centers are in this era of the pandemic. And they are very much needed and in demand.

One of the big takeaways you will get from this episode is one of the big takeaways is innovation that is going on, seen and unseen.

And ultimately we all need to be patient with our administrators. And administrators and teachers need to be patient while working through unusual time together.

More information is available at www.EHOVE.net.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigates success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

The truth is, administrators start planning for the next school year in January and February.  Here we are at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, a year stifled by COVID-19. 

And we are still in the dark on what the next school year can and will look like.

We certainly encourage school leaders to some time off to take a breath, but not too long.

In this episode, Carol and Joel cover four areas to focus on as you continue your school year planning.

1) What are the different scenarios schools are walking into for next year?  We cover three scenarios that are being discussed. 

2) Communicate your expectations and what you know. And it still may be "we don't know."  Keep over-communicating, but keep this over many social channels and accounts - Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

3) Plan out your communication.  Expect it to be much different than in year's past.  And expect it change, so be nimble.

4) Financial conversation.  Ultimately, you will only survive this financial situation when you communicate what is going on to your stakeholders, your parents and community as a whole.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

In uncertain times, how important is agile leadership? Our guest is Diane Egbers. She's pretty much our resident leadership guru here on the podcast. And she heads up a company called Leadership Excelleration.

Why is agile leadership so important during times like these?

Agile leadership, right now, means leaders need to move from uncertainty to clarity, from stability to agility.

But overall, agile leadership requires us to be humble learners.

Change can provide opportunities, if we seek them, that can be better for all involved. Through agile leadership, It can help guide decisions that were uncertain, to what really needs changed.

How do leaders balance stability and agility?

LEI Consulting is offering online learning Agile Leadership Virtual Series.  Details here.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

In our first of two episodes on the emerging fiscal crisis facing schools, we talked about the 2008 fiscal crisis, the Great Recession, as it was called, and what schools experienced. It is instructive as we look forward to this current crisis and what we might face.

In this episode we talk about how schools can best prepare as they work through this next phase of the pandemic crisis.

Have a financial conversation with your community.  It is critical. There are still many unknowns about the fiscal crisis headed our way. That includes revenue and expenses.

How do you have that financial conversation?  Here are four way you must talk with your community about finances:

• Schedule it. Develop a calendar and rhythm to your messaging.
• Broadcast it.  Touch as many mediums as possible.
• Message it.  Stick to what you know and the facts.
• Plan it. Show your plan to reflect the new austerity.

We will continue to be with you every step of the way throughout the evolution of this COVID crisis on all our social media platforms, this podcast, and our website. 

It is helpful to reflect back to 2008. There are some real lessons learned and schools will certainly be looking to that to see how they might proceed.

It's just so important for you right now to be engaging with your public about the financial conversation of you're hearing and seeing. Don't count on them to just know and to be aware, but be very real and authentic when you're talking with them.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

This episode is the first of a two part series focusing on the looming fiscal crisis that public schools will be facing. This is something that's fast coming down the track, we want you to be prepared.

We reflect back on 2008 within the podcast. What happened? 

• We saw the lowest school levy passage rate in years, and for years to come.
• Lists of budget reductions and cuts, ahead of levy requests, and even if levy passed.
• Contract negotiations that included zero/near zero increases for many years, plus concessions that included revising health care.

The COVID crisis is ever evolving. Find out what and when you need to be communicating about the financial condition and health of your school system.

Sneak peak - in the second part of the two part series, we're going to talk about what you can expect with the looming fiscal crisis for schools, and how your school district can best prepare.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

We are so glad to be back again. We feel like I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. And we're sure you have been as well while dealing with the COVID virus.

With episode I'm back with my co-host Joel Gagne. We sometimes podcast together on different topics that we see our clients and school districts face.

In Part 1, COVID-19 Crisis: Where We Are Right Now With Communication, we talked specifically about how Coronavirus is effecting your communication in your school district. 

In this episode, part 2, we talk to about what's ahead, and how to effectively continue communications with your school community. 

When things get back to "normal," we need to accept that things are not getting back to normal anytime soon.

And maybe not everything should come back. We need to take a hard look at how are we running business, so to speak, the business of schools, and how are we running different initiatives.

The school districts that we've seen have the most success are diverse in how they communicate. They are flexible in their approach and have infrastructure to back that up.

That's where the change is going to happen. School districts are going to create that type of flexible infrastructure for any scenario that comes up that might impact their learning environment.

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

We are so glad to be back again. We feel like I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. And we're sure you have been as well while dealing with the COVID virus.

With episode I'm back with my co-host Joel Gagne. We sometimes podcast together on different topics that we see our clients and school districts face.

This is part one of a two part conversation. We're talking specifically about the Coronavirus on your communication to your school district. And we're discussing what schools are dealing with during this pandemic shutdown and its effects.

Communication matters. Tonality matters.  Semantics matters.

As Joel states, "...if you have a financial adviser and you're looking at your retirement account, one of the first things you always sit there and say is diversity, diversity, diversity. If you want to make sure that you that you're going to be stable, then your stock portfolio needs to be diverse. The same is true with communications."

You just cannot rely on one communication platform or one way of communicating with your community. School districts have got to be reaching non-parents.

They're taxpayers. They're the ones who are underwriting this school district. To maintain a level of credibility with them, you need to be able to explain the value proposition in what you're doing and how you're doing it.

In part 2, we talk to about what's ahead, and how to effectively continue communications with your school community. 

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns.

Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.

Are you ready to break through barriers to higher levels of achievement for you and the leaders around you? In this episode we talk about leadership development.

What is leadership development?

Well, we all have our own ideas, but when done right, it's about being intentional and deliberate. With us today is Diane Egbers. She's pretty much our resident leadership guru here on the podcast. And she heads up a company called Leadership Excelleration.

Chris Fussel - Team of Teams

We Love Schools is a podcast produced by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell that highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns. Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world

We welcome Superintendent Rick Smith of the Ohio Hi-Point Career Center, which is in Bellefontaine, Ohio, northwest of Columbus, Ohio.

We talk about the importance of working with the business industry to form effective partnerships. This is definitely something that's taking on a life of its own. A lot of businesses are looking for workers. We've covered that extensively in our podcasts, but particularly here, we focus on building partnerships.

Businesses are now coming to schools, career centers, vocational education, saying "We need workers. We want to help you help you train our future workers, what can we do to give you the tools so we can get a workforce."

As much as we talk about jobs and the economy, the bottom line here is it still many jobs are left unfilled because businesses cannot find workers who have the skills necessary.

Got a question or topic you’d like covered in an upcoming We Love Schools podcast? Email us at [email protected]

First time listening to We Love Schools? Learn more about our podcast. 

Interested in learning more about how the Allerton Hill Consulting team can your help school with communications? Contact us today.

We Love Schools is hosted by Joel Gagne & Carole Dorn-Bell, and highlights and investigate success stories in school communications campaigns. Through interviews with today’s educational and communication leaders address the issues, obstacles and best practices of communicating with your community in today's all-access social media-driven world.