What a vendor does on your worst morning tells you what edtech vendor trust is really worth. I was in the car with my family, coming home at the tail end of spring break, when my phone started going off. Texts. Emails. Help desk tickets stacking up on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody could log in,…
For my first few years as a technology director, my right eye started twitching about a week before school started. It kept going until sometime in October. I want to tell you I found that alarming, but I didn’t. I found it normal, almost expected. August was hard, everybody knew August was hard, and my…
When I stepped into my first district technology leadership role, I inherited a lot of things I didn’t choose…a network, a device fleet, contracts, renewal dates, and an empty filing cabinet. And I inherited vendors. Dozens of them, in a small rural district that didn’t have the enrollment to warrant a dedicated account manager at…
The responsibilities of leadership don’t disappear overnight. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve been carrying until you set them down. This week, for the first time in twenty years (actually for the first time ever!), I’m not going back to school. That sentence still feels strange to write. For my first ten years in…
Summer has a way of revealing the connection between school communication and family trust. During the school year, most families are trying to keep up. They are managing schedules, homework, sports, transportation, emails, apps, forms, lunch accounts, and the general chaos of raising children while trying to keep life moving. But summer creates a different…
And why that invisibility is actually a leadership risk Last week was spring break. Which means this week, every system gets tested. Devices reconnect. Passwords are forgotten. Tickets spike. The quiet hum of operations either holds…or it doesn’t. And most senior leaders don’t realize: When everything works, no one notices. When one thing breaks, everyone…
Strong systems do not automatically produce strong public understanding. That’s one of the most counterintuitive leadership lessons I’ve encountered, and one I’ve watched play out in districts across the country. Some of the best-run schools I’ve seen are also some of the least visible. The assumption underneath that invisibility is almost always the same: If…
In K–12 leadership, we work with a lot of vendors. Some are responsive. Some are innovative. Some are persistent. But very few are true partners. And in this moment, the difference matters more than ever. District leaders are navigating AI, cybersecurity, interoperability, enrollment shifts, staffing shortages, board politics, and community trust, often all at once….
I didn’t set out to write a book about marketing. I set out to write a book about survival. Long before I sat in cabinet meetings or analyzed enrollment reports, I learned a lesson no teacher prep program ever mentions: when you teach an elective, your job security is directly tied to enrollment. No butts…
It’s December, which means I’m running on a cocktail of holiday adrenaline, strategic planning energy, and the creeping realization that something’s got to give. . Can you relate? Here’s my mid-year truth: I’m tired. Not the “I need a vacation” tired. The “I’m not sure this pace is sustainable” tired. And the tricky part is,…
