Education Week - June 9, 2021 - 4

How
Decisions
Are Made
In a Crazy,
VUCA World
Three districts' experiences
navigating volatility, uncertainty,
complexity, and ambiguity
By Kevin Bushweller
I
n the business world, there's a leadership concept
about the modern decisionmaking environment
called VUCA. It's a funny-sounding
acronym that was around long before the pandemic,
but it has become especially hot over
the past year. It stands for volatility, uncertainty,
complexity, and ambiguity.
District and school leaders do not use the acronym
regularly and many are unaware of it. But nearly all
district and school leaders are immersed in it more
than ever, and it is beginning to show up in high level
education circles. School Administrator, the magazine
of AASA, the School Superintendents Association,
for instance, published an August cover story about
" Operating in a VUCA World. "
" If you don't accept business principles, you will
get lost in this mess, " said Michael Hinojosa, the
superintendent of the Dallas school district.
He should know.
On top of the historic educational and economic
disruption caused by COVID-19 over the past year, the
Dallas area was hit by a winter storm across the state
in February that shut down the power grid and created
chaos for weeks. In a 145,000-student school system
where nearly 9 of every 10 children are from low-income
families, that one-two punch further complicated
decisions about how to feed and educate already
vulnerable kids.
Weighing options
for displaced students
after a destructive fire
Victor Shandor, the superintendent of the York County
schools in Virginia, started his educational career as a
special education teacher. In his teaching days, he was
always struck by how meetings about individualized
education programs for students with disabilities were
much too often emotionally charged, volatile experiences,
with parents and advocates pitted against educators. He
remembers his peers really struggling with the decisionmaking
process.
While working as a special education director for the
Cabarrus County schools in North Carolina earlier in his
career, he learned about the field of " decision analysis "
from a fellow educator in a graduate program, who connected
him to a nonprofit consulting company called
TregoED.
Shandor took the TregoED decisionmaking strategies
back to Cabarrus and then to Fulton County, Ga., where
he served as an area superintendent, before landing the
top job in York County in 2014.
On Feb. 3, 2020, the electrical room in a massive educational
complex housing a high school and middle school
in York County caught fire and triggered an explosion,
shutting down power and pushing thick smoke throughout
the inside of the facility.
" Shortly after fire officials contained the situation, I
visited the school to visually assess, and realized instantly
the magnitude of this event, " Shandor said. " With no
power, and smoke still present, it was both difficult to see
and breathe as I entered the building. "
He knew this would not be a quick fix.
That night, he met with his leadership team to talk
about two important questions: What and how long would
it take to restore the building? And what would be the best
plan to keep school going for the displaced students? The
leadership team then established 15 criteria for getting the
kids back in school-including non-negotiables, such as
the state's seat-time requirements for students.
Soon after the fire, the potential for VUCA chaos in
the 12,900-student district began circling. People in the
community started urgently suggesting ideas on the York
County VA 411 Facebook group, which has about 22,000
members. One of the more popular ideas was to relocate
the displaced students to an empty Kmart warehouse. But
there were major safety, security, transportation, and even
bathroom considerations that those pushing the plan had
not weighed.
" People put out there all these ideas of things to do, " re4
| EDUCATION WEEK | June 9, 2021 | www.edweek.org
Despite the pandemic's challenges, however, the
school district managed late last year to get voters to
approve a $3.5 billion dollar construction and technology
bond, the largest school bond in Texas history. Hinojosa
chalks up the success to a much-more sophisticated
planning process built on business principles and an
understanding of how poor decisionmaking can derail
educational priorities.
" Running a school district is one of the toughest, most
complex jobs in America, " said John J-H Kim, a senior
lecturer at the Harvard Business School and the CEO of
the District Management Group, which advises district
leaders on decisionmaking. " People are feeling [VUCA],
they're living it, the meaning behind it. "
Education Week interviewed district leaders around
the country to better understand how they and their
leadership teams make decisions in increasingly
complex environments. What became clear in those
interviews is that this trend started years ago, escalated
during the pandemic, and will likely be the environment
everyone is living in for the foreseeable future.
Following are lessons from three district leaders
on what they learned as they worked through
complicated, volatile decisionmaking challenges over
the past year.
called Heather Young, the principal of York County's Tabb
Middle School, which was not part of the damaged facility
but was critical to how the displaced middle schoolers
would be educated. " It was chaos, actually. There were so
many decisions that had to be made. It was so complex. "
Shandor added: " People jump to solutions instead of
following the process. "
District leaders identified nine options they evaluated,
including the one to move the school to the empty
warehouse. They explained the benefits and drawbacks
of each option at a public meeting, and outlined why they
ultimately settled on a plan to create a hybrid learning
model, in which the displaced high school students attended
classes at another district high school on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays and learned remotely
on two other days. The students already enrolled at the
high school attended classes in their building Mondays ,
Wednesdays, and Fridays. The displaced middle school
students experienced a similar model at Tabb Middle.
" We did that for a month before COVID hit, " said
Shandor.
After the pandemic's impact reached Virginia, Shandor
turned again to the decisionmaking strategies in trying to
establish a plan for full-time remote learning. He established
two relatively simple, guiding priorities: continuity
of learning and connections with students and families.
The district started the 2020-21 school year in full-time
remote mode and gradually transitioned back to a hybrid
model, bringing pre-K-2 students, children with special
needs, and English- language learners back to school
buildings first. " We took a crawl, walk, run approach " to
getting kids back in school buildings, he said.
Kathleen Eisenhardt, co-author of Simple Rules: How
to Thrive in a Complex World and S.W. Ascherman MD
professor of strategy at Stanford University's school of
engineering, said when businesses and organizations like
school districts have to make big decisions involving a
variety of engaged stakeholders, it's best to show multiple
options but probably no more than three or four. People
have trouble focusing on five or more, and " naturally
gravitate to one alternative, " she said.
Eisenhardt also suggests schools consider the two-option
approach-what's called A/B testing in the business
world-for decision-oriented experimentation around
relatively smaller decisions. Doing that can reveal surprising
results. In an A/B study done before the pandemic,
Eisenhardt said Airbnb wanted to find out whether or not
it was easier to recruit homeowners to rent out rooms via
the room rental app by holding an in-person party or using
social media. It turned out holding a party worked better.
" In more-progressive companies these days, there is an
emphasis on constantly experimenting, " said Eisenhardt,
adding that " education is a great place to do lots of little
experiments " too. 
Illustration by Emma Patti Harris/Education Week + Getty
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - June 9, 2021

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