A lesson from the early days of the Covid pandemic remains just as pertinent today: A closed campus makes people hunger for connection with their school.

Community members want to know all they can about the emergency that shut the school, whether faculty and staff are doing all right, when classes might resume, and what they can personally do to help.

The Head of School is the face and voice of the institution in such a moment. Yet the responsibility of keeping everyone connected and informed lies ultimately with communications staff.

Severe weather and other common causes for closure typically occur with little warning. So communicators need to prepare ahead of time to anticipate this call to action. Fortunately, the to-do list is relatively short and straightforward.

What’s in your go bag

Create at least one dedicated backpack for crisis communications. This “go bag” should hold several materials useful in an emergency, including:

• An older laptop or tablet computer with WiFi and/or cellular connectivity, along with power cords (its age makes it relatively disposable)
• A printed, generally up-to-date list of students, current parents, faculty and staff. Each entry on the list should include cell and landline numbers, email addresses and home addresses.
• Printed log-in instructions for key cloud-computing elements, such as emergency communications applications, the website provider, social media accounts and the learning management system
• Copies of the school’s employee and student handbooks (we recommend printouts, although these could be pre-loaded on the computer)
• A copy of the school’s crisis procedures and emergency response plan (same as above)

The go bag maintains the school’s ability to communicate widely, even if on-campus servers go offline. Add any other items that feel appropriate to that task — even protein bars! (Keeping people connected can really work up an appetite.)

Should a school have multiple bags — say, one at the communications director’s home and another on campus that goes with communications office staff during every emergency drill? Why not!? Here, redundancy is a benefit.

How do you read me?

The weak link for school communications is vulnerable infrastructure, which can suddenly cut off a school from the rest of the world. Schools learned this through widespread website outages in 2022 and fiber optic damage in 2024, which broke internet, cellular and telephone networks.

We recommend that schools look into satellite internet hubs as a worst-case option. That way, communicators can continue to publish must-know information through website pop-ups, social media infographics, emails and text-only web pages.

Starlink is a well-known satellite internet option, but others exist, too. A school’s IT director is likely the best person to explore what’s available.

Electrical outages also merit consideration; computers won’t run long without being recharged. That’s why the go bag should hold printed materials, rather than trust in digital ones.

And don’t overlook the merits of an old-fashioned phone tree, a proven way to connect with a far-flung community.

Share what you can

The school that provides information soon after a crisis will sustain more trust than the one that stays mum. In a time of anxiety and pain, transparency is a virtue.

Of course, there will be a gap between what your leadership team knows and what you are prepared to say. But the broader that divide, the greater the opportunity for rumors to run ahead of facts, which will create a real headache for administrators.

So a school should plan on pushing out a steady stream of information, whether through regular email updates or a constantly updated page online. Holding statements will buy some time at first, but ultimately, updates will be necessary. A school’s emergency response plan should reflect this expectation.

Consider all your constituents

In a school closure, alumni and prospective families will have questions, too — and theirs won’t necessarily overlap with the interests of others.

Should development and admissions staff deal with these? Or should the questions fold into the communications office’s work? The answer will depend on the school. Either way, though, administrators should anticipate this appetite for information, and a protocol for informing these constituencies belongs in the school’s emergency-response plan.

The broader community deserves attention, too: News outlets that typically ignore independent schools may suddenly become interested in campus updates after a closure.

If your school needs help in preparing for a possible closure, reach out to Fine Point Communications. We’d be glad to counsel you through common scenarios and to point out some situations that have tripped up other schools.

This post is adapted from the October 2024 issue of Refill, a newsletter published by Fine Point Communications.