Pivoting Education Systems in a Crisis – Lessons from Woburn, MA Public Schools

Introduction Hello and welcome to Building State Capability at Harvard University’s podcast series. In this episode of the BSC podcast, Salimah Samji interviews Matt Crowley, Superintendent of the Public School District in Woburn, Massachusetts. They discuss how this school system pivoted to remote learning during the COVID 19 pandemic and the importance of collaboration and adaptability when living through a crisis.

Salimah Samji Welcome to the BSC podcast series today. With me I have Matt Crowly. He is the superintendent of the Woburn Public School District. Welcome, Matt.

Matt Crowley Thank you very much for having me.

Salimah Samji We’re delighted to have you. So what we thought it would be really wonderful to hear about your experience running a public school district through the COVID pandemic, which still continues today. So I was wondering if we could start in March 2020. So COVID is happening. What did you do? This must have been a really hard thing to make decisions about.

Matt Crowley Yeah. So going back to March of 2020, it’s one of those events that I think will live in my mind forever. We made the decision in Woburn as part of the Middlesex League to close schools for two weeks. We made that decision collectively on March 11. It was a Wednesday. I was on a conference call with area superintendents and talking about the coronavirus, and nobody really had a good handle on that point. And I can tell you that certainly I was naive. Our attendance had declined a little bit that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday with students and staff, but nothing that really raised significant flags at that point. But on the call, again, we were all together trying to figure this out. We made the decision at that point to close schools for two weeks, effective on March 13th. And we did a half day on that Friday so that students could come in and gather their belongings. I had a meeting on Friday the 13th and again, ironic with the leadership team to describe what we were doing. And at that point, the direction from the state was to essentially close and tread water, so to speak. It was a temporary pause. We weren’t required to provide much instruction at home. And again, that the Sunday prior to the closure. I was at the Celtics game with my with my two sons. Right. And we were at the Boston Garden with, you know, however many thousand people. And so this whole thing really for me, I was wistfully unaware, I suppose, of the impact. And then I say that personally because as a school system we were also then not necessarily prepared to handle it. I am incredibly proud of what we’ve done since the closure in the spring of 2020 and then all through last year. So it’s posed many, many challenges. But the work that has happened in the district, you know, the teachers have been incredible. I think people have been doing things differently over the past 18, 19 months, all for kids. And I’m really, really proud of what we’ve done for kids in these incredibly challenging times. I’m rambling, but I want to make sure I don’t forget people. One of the first decisions we made was we needed to make sure we were feeding people. So our schools, our food service, we stayed open. And so we closed schools on March 13. On Monday, we had lunch ready for any anyone in the public schools that needed it to be picked up at our schools. And then we had to figure out, well, maybe we need to deliver to different pockets of town because we couldn’t get to the schools because we were providing transportation, and our custodians kept working to make sure that we were clean and safe. And, you know, those two things happened right out of the gate. We again, tried to care for people in the most basic way. And I’m really proud of those decisions that we made initially. Obviously, this is a public health crisis. Our nursing team stepped up in ways that we wouldn’t have been able to figure out. We got them cell phones so they could reach to families to to do contact tracing on behalf of the public schools in the city. It’s a great collaboration. The city government here and in the mayor, Scott Galvin, has been there for I think he’s finishing sixth term. He and I have a great relationship and we try to make sure that we’re collaborating both the schools and the city. You know, our administrative team was stretched in ways that beyond what anyone could imagine. And so when I think back to where we were on that date in March of 2020 and where we are now, it’s pretty wild. It’s been a wild ride.

Salimah Samji So, you know, you close thinking only for two weeks. And then it turns out we’re in this lockdown and who knows when we’re going to. And I think even in April, as a parent myself, I wasn’t even sure is my child going to go back in May or like. Idea in March or even in early April was never that that was it. Going to school was over. How did you think about okay, I love your example about food. Like let’s meet the basic needs of our children. And then when did it become clear that, okay, what about the teaching? Because with this moving thing, it wasn’t clear. Do we have to start having remote classes? What do we do about the learning?

Matt Crowley I’d have to almost look back at my calendar to give you all of the meetings that we had to figure this out, because in many ways, the virus is an invisible enemy, so to speak. And we then had to come up with a tangible plan. And so the deadline, if I recall, schools are closed until May 4th or something along that line. You know, the governor made that decision and at some point we were required to start delivering instruction. And so for us, one of the challenges there was not all kids had a device. And so that’s right. We had to provide devices to students that didn’t have them. So that was one of the initial things we did in March when we closed. And fortunately, we were able to provide devices to our students. But I can tell you right outside my office is where we did a sort of a drive through device pick up, where all of our Chromebooks were asset tagged, and our technology department, who has been unbelievable through this whole process organized where parents would call up or email us, tell us they needed a device. They were given a number sort of like at a drive thru or, you know, when you’re waiting at a deli counter. And then they would drive through a parking lot and they were queued up in the street. We had to have administrators in place to kind of, you know, it’s very orderly, but not to create a traffic jam. And families were given one device per family. And that’s what we were able to do at that point. Just again, one of these fundamental. Issues of equity that we are trying to wrestle with in real time when we were closed. And so that was definitely a challenge. And the other part to the device issue is why say we assume, right, that everyone has access to the Internet and that is not true.

Salimah Samji That’s right. And not even in the United States. Right. People assume that the United States, they must all have all of these things. And that’s just not true.

Matt Crowley Correct. Yeah. And I give a lot of credit. We we were able to add family and community engagement liaison position pre-pandemic. And she has been out with families and the ability to communicate with families in different languages, but also to to meet their needs and to hear what the needs are. So what we wound up doing there was purchasing hotspots to give to families so that they could access the Internet. Right. And so it’s just been one challenge after another and fortunately built up capacity over the past few years to meet some of these challenges. I always say I’m absolutely proud of what we’ve done. We’re not perfect. All I don’t want to say that we handled everything perfectly.

Salimah Samji No, but nobody is perfect. No. Tell me more about this position that you created, this family engagement liaison. It sounds wonderful, right? I mean, you do need to engage with the parents. And then there’s people who speak different languages and meeting people where they’re at. How do you find out the issues of the parents in a time of a pandemic and becomes even more important? But it sounds like you did this before the pandemic. So tell me a little bit about your thinking there.

Matt Crowley Sure. So prior to coming to Woburn, I was an educator in the city of Brockton for quite a while as a teacher and administrator. And Brockton is a diverse community south of Boston, and they do have a parent information center in the city of Brockton. And I always thought that that was a great idea because it allowed new people to the city an opportunity to enroll registered students and so forth. And so that concept was was in my mind. I also did my dissertation on immigrant students from the country of Cape Verde and the role of social capital. And I say that because one of my findings was that it didn’t matter who it was, it could be any person in the city that sort of acted as an institutional agent for a family, and that could change the trajectory of a student’s outcome. And, you know, genuinely, I found there were custodians that were able to guide students in certain ways because they knew the system a little bit better. And so the idea of social capital is, in my mind’s eye, so important to all of us and to try to extend that here and move. And so we were able to do it. She’s in her third year now, so this is pre-pandemic and we grant funded it for the first year to see if it was worthwhile. And clearly it is. And we’re actually trying to expand that position to add to her team, so to speak, because it’s such an important element of student success, but also family success. We want families to feel connected to schools, to the library, to the rec department, to the city. And so it’s really been a great addition to our school system.

Salimah Samji You know, making decisions like this is hard, right? What do you do about this? How do you think about that? How did you make these decisions? Did you have people that you could speak to? And you mentioned leadership team earlier. I was wondering if you could just explain more about this leadership team for our listeners.

Matt Crowley Sure. I would tell anybody, you know, this job is very, very hard and I could not do it alone. And so I am very fortunate to have many people that I work with every day. And so I refer to the broader context as leadership team. I have an amazing group of principals. We have ten schools in the city of Hoover, and so they’re definitely an integral part of the leadership team. I also have three assistant superintendents. We all work together every day on any issue and are in constant communication with each other, and so they are also part of my leadership team. I also would tell you that I collaborate closely with the president of the Teachers Association, the union, while not officially part of my team, so to speak. We are you know, we’re teammates and we’re trying to get through this together. And so we speak about a variety of different issues as it relates to the pandemic. Each of the assistant superintendents also have people that they work with. So, for example, there are curriculum roles that leadership roles. We have an amazing tech department that I alluded to earlier. Our special Ed Department is a director of special education who’s been nothing short of amazing during the pandemic, because one of the areas that, you know, for learning loss and parents worried about their kids is trying to figure out how to meet the individual needs of all students, but particularly those in our special ed department. The other group that I would really like to recognize is my school committee, who have been fabulous to work with throughout the pandemic. They’ve been nothing but supportive, and we work collaboratively on almost every decision that we make as it relates to the schools. They have prioritized the students and families throughout the pandemic, and I owe a debt of gratitude to them for their support. And so, you know, there’s an array of people that kind of compose the district. And so I call everybody under that umbrella of the leadership team. The decisions are collaborative. I try to talk through the majority of decisions that we need to make. Ultimately, some are you know, we just have to make quickly, and I think we do. But I think the larger decision is it’s nice to have input from a variety of different folks before we make a make a final determination.

Salimah Samji Absolutely. And just listening to the diverse viewpoints. Right. From the various stakeholders, whether it’s the parents, it’s the teachers, it’s the unions, it’s the school administrators. Everyone does have a different viewpoint on the same issue of educating our children. So the idea of your leadership team sounds really excellent. I’m assuming it’s also a way that gives you a pulse of what’s going on in the education system and hear about the issues that people are having, the challenges that you are then better able to address because you know they exist.

Matt Crowley Absolutely. I can’t be everywhere. And so it’s great to have people that are able to see and then inform in real time. And again, the teachers, the people that are in the classroom every day really deserve. Hero. I mean, they’re doing amazing work. And so, you know, I talk about leadership team. I have nothing but enormous gratitude for the teachers that have pivoted multiple times since March of 2020 and continue to do that. And so they’ve been great and they work tirelessly. Teachers will, you know, I’ll get direct emails, which is wonderful, but they’ll work with their schools to resolve any questions people have. And so it’s been a very challenging environment, but it’s been a respectful environment and we’re doing what we believe is the best thing we can do for kids.

Salimah Samji I’m wondering if you can speak a little more about the actual teaching and learning. Pivoting to virtual or remote learning is hard. This was hard for us at Harvard University and we have a lot of resources, etc. I kid you not. It was a struggle because we have some faculty who struggle with technology who have never been into the idea of remote learning or why should you do things online? You know, the only way to learn is in-person. And so how did that work out for you?

Matt Crowley I would like to think of this as a silver lining, that teachers learn technology in a way that we would never have been able to do without a pandemic. Our tech department was able to push out a variety of different platforms for teachers that they could find, one that they were more comfortable with, whether it was Google Classroom at some of the secondary level or a seesaw at the elementary levels, we use screencast ify allow teachers to record lessons and these are things that I believe that are still in place, right? So we just had a back to school mode at the elementary level for our families. Our principals recorded screencast of, by and use that right. And so you know, we’re trying to capitalize on what we’ve learned and we have meetings. I just got off of principal meeting. I was on a Google meet. And you know people can stay in their buildings were productive. We know how to do breakout rooms and get things accomplished. So I think it’s been a challenge to your question. And, you know, Harvard, with the resources you have, it’s not about money, it’s about learning. And. That’s right. Think we’ve done that.

Salimah Samji That’s wonderful. Do you have some examples you can share about some of the things you had to learn or, you know, try out and see whether it worked and just experiment? Because that’s kind of the only way you learn because there is no script. There is no way to do this. You just have to try things and see what sticks.

Matt Crowley One of our greatest learnings, I think, was last year. During the course of the year we were in a hybrid model and we were remote on Wednesdays. That was the way that we structured our our school year. And one of the best things that happened was this collaboration between third grade teachers as an example, district wide. Every Wednesday they would meet on a Google meet to talk about what was happening in third grade, fourth grade and so forth. And we’re going to continue that this year because it worked and it was time well spent that otherwise we would not have ever thought about using the time that way. And so it really highlights this collaborative structure that was put into place by necessity, but it’s something that we want to carry forward. And I think it’s, again, to try to spin it in a positive light, a silver lining of the pandemic. Another example of technology being utilized differently is the QR codes that are so prevalent now. Students at the secondary level of high school can scan in to school if they’re running late with a QR code. So it’s changed how kids are able to access their education. They can, you know, it’s quicker and they get right to class. And so those kinds of things have been great discoveries.

Salimah Samji Great. You know, through this conversation, you’ve already talked about some of your lessons that you’ve had in this the last 18 months. Are they some that you would say are some key things that you have learned? And also how or are you planning to continue to use them? Right. So that what we’re finding in some places is people learned a whole load of skills in this pandemic because they have to try different things. But the moment we went back to, okay, we’re back into in-person learning and all that learning is just kind of forgotten or lost. And so what are some mechanisms you are using to ensure that some of the things that you’ve learned you will still continue to use?

Matt Crowley You know, one of the things that we’re continuing to use is the technology, particularly at the secondary level, where now every student from grade 6 to 12 has a Chromebook that goes back and forth every day. It does not replace in-person instruction and it does not replace the teacher. There’s nothing more important than what happens between the teacher and student. But I think that in a lot of cases, teachers are now doing things almost like a flipped classroom where students are doing work at home and then coming in to discuss. And so I think that is something that has been an important finding. At the elementary level. One of my favorite things to witness is recess. I think particularly at the elementary, but kids are outside more. We have a couple of elementary schools where they’ve taken tree stumps and they’re doing outdoor classrooms. I love that. I want that to stay. I don’t want to lose that. I think we’re trying to prioritize social and emotional health of our kids, too, and staff. I mean, we’ve gone through and continue to go through a traumatic collective experience. And so we want to make sure that we have resources for our kids to feel safe in school. And so we’ve been able to provide counseling as needed, both in school and outside of school. We have wraparound services. We’ve written grants for students, can have services on weekends or vacations during the summer. And so, you know, problems don’t just arise during the school hours, right? So we try to be cognizant of that so that, again, we’re able to. Meet the needs of our kids so that when they come to school, they’re in a place ready to learn.

Salimah Samji That’s great. I think my final question for you would be what advice would you give to either superintendents? Principals, you know, anyone in the public school system about how to handle these challenges with this virus that we thought would end 18 months later? We’re still here. We hear about new variants every day. This isn’t going away. And I feel like this isn’t the only problem we’re going to have. And even looking at climate change, our world is changing. We’re just going to see a lot more of this. What’s some advice you would give others in your position to think about as as ways to navigate how we do our jobs?

Matt Crowley If I were to say anything, I’d say be vulnerable. You know, we don’t know how to do this. We’ve never done it before. We’re asked to do things differently. So I try to ask as many questions as possible of as many people as possible. I try to go slow know and I know that it may not be the way that everyone would like, but I’d rather get as much information as possible to try to make a good decision. And, you know, I keep saying that our priority is the health and safety of everybody in the public schools. And so whatever decision we make has to have that as a top priority. And so if it requires me asking more questions and I need it, so be it. But I’m okay. I want to be respectful of people and hear what other folks have to say. You know, I do think that there’s a collective wisdom that ultimately will benefit everybody. And so my advice, I guess, is ask questions, be vulnerable, and let’s get through this together.

Salimah Samji Wonderful. That’s excellent. That is very good advice. I’m sure our listeners will really appreciate that. You know, when we are in the unknown, just accepting that we don’t know and asking questions and realizing we’re in this together are all really excellent pieces of advice. Thank you very much, Matt. This has been a really great conversation and thank you for sharing some of the things that you’ve done in your school district. It’s been a real pleasure.

Matt Crowley Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.

Ending To learn more about the Building State Capability program, visit bsc.cid.harvard.edu.