Michigan School District Superintendent Leaves No Room to Maneuver
Dave Oates, APR
Corporate and Crisis Communications Executive, Author, Speaker, Educator
Another week, another school shooting. The tragedy of it all is something I've talked about ad nauseam on previous blog segments. So I really don't want to go there anymore.
But what I do want to do is talk about the school superintendent of the district in which the Oxford High School is part and the statement that he made not long after the shooting, where he defended the school counselors in their previous interactions with the alleged shooter and how they decided that discipline wasn't warranted and that he could return to the classroom. That's a big bone of contention.
I hope he's right.
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It’s a pretty bold move for the superintendent. On one level, from a leadership perspective, I applaud the fact that he's backing up the staff within the district. But I think it's way too early to state such a thing before you really allow the internal investigation and the law enforcement investigation to conclude. He's put himself into a position that if it is uncovered, either in criminal or in civil litigation, which undoubtedly will happen, that there was something that the counselors missed, that there is something that the officials should have looked at and didn't that allow, at least somewhat in part, to enable this event to occur on campus, is going to make the superintendent not only eat his words but create a bigger liability for the district, disparage the reputation of the district even further and likely will cost his job.
At the beginning of any crisis of this nature, particularly ones, that involve the deaths of others, I would caution organizations that while you want to be as transparent, open, empathetic, and action-oriented as you can, try not to be so definitive in the early stages as to what occurred and what didn’t. Every time, the first facts as you get them in a crisis are generally incomplete if not completely wrong. It's chaos.
And for this superintendent to come on a limb and state unequivocally that there's nothing that the counselors could have done puts him in a spot.
I hope he's right.