Organizing for Care: Distributed District Leadership During a Crisis

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: District Leadership in Complexity: Navigating Competing Demands of Academic Excellence, Evidence-Based Decision Making, Inclusion, and Care in a Time of Crisis (Table 20)

Abstract

In the wake of trauma caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, education leaders are pressed to provide social-emotional supports for students and staff. One such method for attending to social and mental health needs is through caring leadership structures. This qualitative instrumental case study examines one purposively chosen school district, located in a farmworker community comprised largely of Latinx families, to consider how central office leaders created or maintained well-being and social-emotional supports under crisis conditions. Findings suggest that district-level care was multidimensional and distributed, involved improvisational structures, mobilization of community-driven leadership, and was enacted through a collective vision that was rooted in a love of place and community, focused on healing and care.

Author

• Kate Kennedy, RAND Corporation