I usually try to start these posts the way I would a conversation or a meeting. A greeting, a check-in, an anecdote, an ice-breaker. We talk about a lot of heavy stuff around here. Education is emotional work that runs the full gamut from pure joy to soul-crushing sadness. Governance can be dry and boring. St. Louis will always find a way to break your heart. So, it seems rude and jarring to just show up in your inbox and launch right into tales of corruption, leadership malfeasance, and policy solutions no one asked for but I feel compelled to write anyway.
Today, though, I’m going to do the opposite because I don’t want anything to detract or distract from the thing I need to say.
The SLPS response to the tornado is not good enough.
(Note: Here and throughout this post I’m using “SLPS” and “the district” as shorthand for the superintendent, her cabinet, and the school board. You already know I’ve got nothing but love and respect for school-based staff.)
Dr. Borishade often repeats things for effect, so let me do that too.
The SLPS response to the tornado is not good enough.
I’ll say that again in a slower and more dramatic voice:
The SLPS response to the tornado is not good enough.
A devastating tornado ripped through St. Louis, yet the district didn’t send out any communication at all until Sunday evening. An entire weekend without an email, a social media post, a robocall. If they can keep us informed about feel-good publicity stunts like Lit for the Lou, surely they can manage to send something out in an actual life-and-death disaster. Did they forget? Does communication with families about their needs not rise to the top of the list of priorities? Or, like City government, did someone just forget to press the [robocall] button?
The only acknowledgement of any kind from the district was a pop-up message on the www.slps.org homepage added sometime Friday afternoon or evening alerting us all staff and students were safe during the storm. The final sentence let us know we’d get more information on Sunday. To their credit, they followed through on that.
On Sunday we received three emails in 90 minutes (Email 1 with links; Email 2; Email 3), each one with slightly different information than the previous one. It was confusing to get so many emails in a short amount of time. They all looked the same, no label of “update 1” or “version 2”. Nothing but the email timestamp to distinguish them from each other.
But you know what, it didn’t really matter in the end. It turned out to be wrong anyway.
In the final email of the evening sent just before 8 pm, Dr. Borishade wrote:
“Earlier today, we shared that students from certain schools would be rerouted to other SLPS schools due to ongoing power outages. At that time, we advised families to have students report to their regular bus stops for transportation to their temporary school sites.
That guidance has changed.
Our transportation providers have now informed us that they will not be able to provide bus service at this time. The district’s bus depot was significantly impacted by the storm, and no buses will be running tomorrow.”
-Email 3, May 18, 2025, 7:57 pm, signed by Dr. Borishade [bold text is theirs]
Except buses did run. Cabs, while not included in any of the district’s update about Monday transportation, apparently ran too. Certainly not all of the routes ran, and I’m sure even more were behind schedule, but that’s typical for SLPS. Every parent is familiar with the will-it-show-up-or-won’t-it game played almost every morning while waiting on the bus.
Honestly, a miscommunication of this level is inexcusable on a normal day; in the aftermath of a disaster it’s abhorrent. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how it could be so wrong.
By Monday evening, SLPS was in our inboxes (Email 4) again. No apologies for such a glaring error. No explanation as to what happened. Just what seems to be ChatGPT gibberish like:
“For those students who were rerouted to alternate school locations today while we assessed the impact on routes, please be aware that these students will remain at their temporary school locations through Thursday, May 22nd, the last day of the school year.
-Email 4, May 19, 2025, unsigned
The SLPS response to the tornado is not good enough.
A devastating tornado ripped through our city on Friday afternoon and yet on Saturday and Sunday graduations went on as scheduled. How many students missed their one chance to walk across the stage, to hear their names called against the backdrop of roaring applause?
That’s not a rhetorical question. Do we even know how many students couldn’t attend due to the loss of power and the impassable roads? Do we know how many students district-wide lost their homes? Are we even trying to find out?
Yes, a makeup ceremony has been scheduled for Vashon (I haven’t heard about any others) and I’m glad the district is course correcting. But any secondary ceremony will not be the same as an event with their entire class and packed auditorium of loved ones.
It seems like the only thing the district is focused on right now is getting through the next 2 days of school when they can put this all behind them and pat themselves on a back for their bravery, creativeness, and generosity. Of the three Facebook posts since the tornado touched down, two have been about the Community Outreach Fair (still zero robocalls), an event (sponsored by The Little Bit Foundation) held at Central Office to distribute supplies, food, and clothing to community members who need it. There’s even a slickly produced video to let us know how great it was. The desire to get supplies in the hands of families is absolutely correct, but was this the way to do it? Do families that need help have transportation to attend the event? Are the mid-day hours accessible to people who work or are dealing with insurance agents, contractors, and clean up crews? Why not deliver the supplies in to the community? Why not make one thing at least a little bit easier for people who need help?
I know, I know. I’m being critical of the district and that is not a thing we’re supposed to do. We’re under attack from the privatizers and reformers, the billionaires and the real estate developers. We’re only supposed to say nice things to try to protect the district, to demonstrate how much we love it and need it.
We need public education. We need a thriving school district. But as much as we need it as an ideological construct, the people need it as an institution more. A dependable, trustworthy institution that loves us back, values us as people, and sees our humanity. Instead, the truth feels like a thing to be massaged and our trust a thing to be manipulated. It’s felt like that for a while now, all academic year at the very least, but in the midst of tragedy it’s impossible to ignore any longer.
Stop the lies, stop the applause, and start getting things right.
This is not just a random thought exercise for me. I’ve actually been in a high profile leadership role during a crisis. Back in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept through the entire world I realized just how high the stakes were and how high the pressure could get. I learned a few things back then, things that could be useful now. And just because I’m sharing advice doesn’t mean I think we always got it right. We didn’t. I knew it then and I realize it even more now. But, I promise you I tried. I pushed Dr. Adams so far out of his comfort zone he hasn’t recovered. Maybe he’ll never recover from having to listen to me all the time and incorporate my ideas into his. And, I promise you he tried, the administration tried. We all tried. There was just so much we didn’t know and we were all learning together. The only good thing about this crisis, this test of leadership, is that it’s a tornado, something St. Louis knows a fair amount about. We know what people need after a tornado: shelter, food, and long term support to make all the decisions that need to be made throughout the extensive recovery. Lucky for us a school district offers the potential to fulfill all three.
People deserve clear, consistent, top-down information directly from the district across as many channels as possible. In a fluid situation, like a pandemic or a tornado, information may change rapidly. If you have to update previous information, label with numbers or times so people can easily figure out which has the latest information. Acknowledge the fluidity of the situation. Sometimes being vague is as good as it gets. In a crisis, there will always be so much more that you don’t know than what you do. No one expects you to have all the answers, but they do expect you to be honest, transparent, and forthcoming with the information that you do have. And, personally, I think top-down is the way to go in times like these. People have children in multiple schools and now is not the time to try to figure out which principal has all the details right. The goal with all of these communications should be to make everyone’s lives easier not add more stress. If you make a mistake, admit it, own it, correct it. Say you’re sorry. Don’t just cover it up with more inaccurate information and hope no one notices.
Incorporate humanity and vulnerability into your leadership style and actions. This can feel scary because there aren’t a lot of great models for it. Every once in a while someone gets it right, but most often, too often, leaders feel the need to be serious, emotionless, fact-based, and somber. I still remember sitting on my couch late at night, reviewing edits on a letter to SLPS families (St. Louis American version). The line that eventually became “we know this is a stressful and emotional time” was originally “We know you are scared. We are too.” The comms team dialed it back. I could live with the edit, but I sure do wish it had gone out naming “scared” as the emotion we were all feeling, because that’s what it was and reflecting peoples thoughts and feelings back to them is always right. Retire the robot-generated, too-many-words communications and just sit down and write what you’d need to hear or the information you’d need to make a decision.
Keep track of the children. Obviously there’s no good time for a tornado, but this is especially bad. Children and their families will be moving, maybe multiple times, as they rebuild what they lost. Temporary shelters. Long term emergency housing. Friends and family. All are possible before they find a long term residence. And just as we’re entering summer break. Families need the stability, resources, and access the school district provides but SLPS can’t make those connections if it doesn’t know where people are and what they need. Once schools closed in March 2020, there were children we never heard from again. Despite everyone’s best efforts, everything from phone calls to home visits, there were children that fell through the cracks and, for the most part, we knew where kids should be. We had an address, there was an eviction moratorium, and social distancing kept people at home. I don’t need to tell you this scenario is very different. I wish I had an idea of how to follow all our children and their families as they worked through this next few months, but I don’t. But we aren’t the first school district to have a tornado or other natural disaster that uprooted lives, and I hope our leaders are looking to others for advice and suggestions.
Ask for help when you need it. And when you don’t think you do. I promise you, you always need the help. This event will disrupt the business routines of the district for AT LEAST the calendar year, but very likely through the end of next summer. Remember that the school board and superintendent should always be about six months ahead. Obviously, that’s not possible in the case of a natural disaster, so getting back to where we were will take at least a year as the planning process catches up.
I don’t know what it’s like to lead others in response to a tornado, but I do know what its like to wake up very day in disbelief that this thing is a thing you have to figure out. I once read an article about how elected officials and leaders rarely get the chance to address their platform or implement their ideas because they instead get handed some crisis or event that demands their attention. I read it in the conference room outside Dr. Adams office one day in the thick of the pandemic. I’ve never been able to find it again no matter how hard I try, but in that moment it was comforting to have someone else tell me I wasn’t a failure for not making good on my campaign promises, this other thing mattered more. So much more.
Responding to the tornado is the only thing you need to worry about now and by giving people what they need in this moment of crisis you’ll do all the other things you need to do too. You’ll still draft and approve a budget, select curriculum, manage school programmatic decisions, evaluate the superintendent (and if you are the superintendent, evaluate the staff), hold summer school, do back-to-school, and on and on and on. You’ll do all that, you’ll just do it against the backdrop of the tornado. But if you don’t get a handle on the tornado response, none of the rest of that matters.
Once again, your exceptional talent and dedication are evident in your writings. However, the response from SLPS leadership was profoundly disappointing and unequivocally fell short of the standards we expect. In the face of immense devastation, amidst the closing of the school year and numerous families displaced it was imperative that empathy, compassion, and respect serve as guiding principles in her actions.
Regrettably, the inadequate communication and apparent lack of understanding highlight an urgent need for extreme caution and introspection within leadership.
What was perhaps most disheartening to witness was Millicent standing amidst the wreckage; debris of family and student homes surrounding her; yet appearing dressed as if attending a routine press conference. This was a lost opportunity to demonstrate true caring and to affirm her role as Superintendent by showing genuine compassion for the community’s suffering that she appears to not have any respect and love for as we do! While many of us were actively on the ground, providing support and assistance, the SLPS leadership's detached demeanor conveyed a concerning disconnect from the gravity of the situation and Millicent's inability to demonstrate empathy and compassion towards our students and community has irrevocably shattered any remaining trust in the leadership.
The fact that graduation ceremonies proceeded amid such devastation, without appropriate acknowledgment or sensitivity, was another stark reminder of the disconnect; likewise of the heavy emphasis on over the top communication for the poorly attended Lit For The Lou as you mentioned.
It is my sincere hope that the Superintendent will engage in deep reflection of this devastation that Mother Nature left behind. An immediate, heartfelt apology to all students, staff, and community members is not only warranted but essential! Showing genuine remorse and a commitment to more empathetic leadership is the minimal standard expected in such times of crisis.