Today's Gift

The past week has been a difficult time to be in a leadership position. The COVID-19 virus has rocked our world!  Many people in leadership positions have had to make uncomfortable decisions about closures that affect all of us. It is easy to see the inconveniences but difficult to see the point of all of it.

As a school superintendent, my husband has been one of those on non-stop conference calls from local health officials and state officials gathering and sorting media hype and overreaction from factual information. And from all this information he had to make a decision about school closure that will affect the lives of not only our students and their family members, but our staff and our community members.  On one hand, there will be lack of child care for children whose parents still must go to work and some children who will not receive the adult care and two meals a day that our school provides them. And with absence from school, students will not be practicing those skills necessary to give us an acceptable rating in the hyper-critical eyes of the Texas state government officials, thus affecting our funding. But on the other hand there may be stress on our health care system, due to many susceptible people becoming exposed to this deadly virus.

On those conference calls, state officials 2-stepped around making a statewide decision of closure for schools as well as other direct questions posed to them about repercussions to our school finances and any possibility of releasing us from this year's state mandated tests. So the stress increases. Finally, after much thoughtful consideration with a group of superintendents in our county, the decision was made to close our schools for a week.  And so the complicated work of educating our students remotely is looming ahead of us next week.

This afternoon however, my husband got a gift.  It was a call from an elderly community member.  This man was mourning the loss of a friend in another state to the COVID-19 virus, who left behind a quarantined, lonely widow. Imagine mourning the death of your spouse completely alone for 14 days with no hugs, no family and no friends. This community member expressed his thanks to my husband for the decision he made on behalf of those who are most susceptible to this virus.  That call was a gift.  It helped him remember why we are doing this. So when you find yourself fretting this weirdness of closures, remember why we are doing this. You will never know the lives that you saved.

Image by Sabine van Erp from Pixabay