scholarly journals Rural Superintendents’ Responses to COVID-19: Navigating Local Control During a Public Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad R. Lochmiller
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
School Board ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rural School ◽  
Crisis Leadership ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Superintendents ◽  
School Board Members ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Individual

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a variety of responses by organizational leaders throughout the United States and internationally. This paper explores the responses of five rural school superintendents who work in a conservative Midwestern state. Using an exploratory qualitative research design, the study analyzes interviews and documents collected remotely to adhere to current public health guidelines. The study adopted a crisis leadership perspective to explore how rural school superintendents were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and managing the politics associated with it. Findings suggest that superintendents were acutely aware of their community’s current political stance toward the COVID-19 pandemic and were especially responsive to the individual political philosophies of their elected school board members. The superintendents did not uniformly adopt crisis leadership behaviors to respond to the circumstances created by the pandemic. Rather, superintendents responded in ways that managed the political perspectives held by their elected board members and sought to reconcile differences in the board members’ political perspectives that precluded action. As part of this reconciliation, the superintendents leveraged public health information to shape and at times change elected school board members’ perspectives. This information helped the superintendents overcome political perspectives that led some of the most conservative board members to resist widely accepted public health guidance. Implications for the field of educational leadership, research on rural superintendents, and potential revisions to superintendent preparation are discussed.

scholarly journals One Head – Many Hats: Expectations of a Rural Superintendent

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rural School ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Rural School Districts ◽  
Administrator Training ◽  
School Superintendents ◽  
School Board Members ◽  
Rural School Administration

Although urban and suburban school superintendents serve the largest group of students in terms of sheer numbers of schoolchildren, there are actually more superintendents serving in rural school districts in the United States. I examined the expected roles or “hats” of the rural superintendent by collecting data from several districts located in NE Colorado. Interviews of school board members and superintendents provided data, which suggested that the expected roles of a rural superintendent are multiple and varied. Five major themes or “hats” emerged that rural communities expected their superintendent to wear. These themes or hats included those of manager, planner, listener, communicator, and community involvement. Included in each of these major themes were many subcategories of hats that are forced on the heads of rural superintendents by their communities and by events that occur daily. This study suggests that there are differences in the expectations of rural superintendents from those serving urban or suburban districts. Administrator training programs at colleges and universities might better serve those students aspiring to rural superintendent positions by offering a specialization in rural school administration or at least offering a separate course designed to cover these unique expectations.

Impact of the California Project LEAN School Board Member Social Marketing Campaign

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. McDermott ◽  
Victoria Berends ◽  
Kelli R. McCormack Brown ◽  
Peggy Agron ◽  
Karen M. Black ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
School Board ◽  
Social Marketing ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Nutrition ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Board Members ◽  
Marketing Campaign ◽  
Social Marketing Campaign ◽  
Food And Beverage

The prevalence of overweight youth in the United States has increased remarkably over the last two decades. Overweight and obese youth are at elevated risk for chronic diseases and other adverse health conditions. The foods and beverages that youth access at school (e.g., in a la carte food lines, in vending machines, and in school stores) contribute to overweight and obesity. Enacting policy to ban or restrict unhealthy food and beverage products at school can play a role in managing the epidemic of obesity. School board members are, therefore, a priority audience for introducing healthier food and beverage alternatives through articulation of specific policy initiatives. Under the leadership of California Project LEAN (Leaders Encouraging Activity and Nutrition), a social marketing campaign was directed at California school board members to motivate them to advance nutrition-related policy issues at school board meetings, and to enact and enforce school policies that support healthy eating. In less than two years after implementing the campaign, a significant increase in nutrition-related issues on school board meeting agendas occurred, more favorable nutrition-related policies became enacted, and school board members reported greater readiness to support school nutrition-related issues. Details of campaign development, implementation, and impact are reported.

scholarly journals Understanding School Boards and Their Use of Different Models of Governance

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Ford ◽  
Douglas M. Ihrke
Keyword(s):  
School Board ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Board Members ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression Analysis ◽  
Governance Model ◽  
Governance Models

In this article, the authors apply Mel Gill’s (2002) description of governance model types to a national sample of school board members in the United States. The authors find that the majority of school board members take a policy-driven approach to board governance, while a substantial percentage take a traditional approach that delegates clear authority to the organization executive. Multinomial-logistic regression analysis and a series of analysis of variance tests are used to identify the structural and group dynamic differences between difference governance model types. The authors find that governance models have an impact on the group dynamics of organizations and that board approaches to governance differ substantially by area, concluding that future studies of governance models should consider the differences in governance strategies across functional areas.

Unresolved Issues in Controlling the Tuberculosis Epidemic Among the Foreign-Born in the United States

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-536
Author(s):  
Guido S. Weber
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Public Health Officials ◽  
Year 2000

Tuberculosis (TB), “the world’s most neglected health crisis,” has returned after decades of decline, but has only gradually caught the attention of governments as a formidable threat to public health. By 1984, when TB cases hit an all-time low, federal and state governments stopped supporting the medical infrastructure that once served to contain the disease. State officials around the nation began dismantling laboratory research programs and closing TB clinics and sanitoria. Since 1985, however, TB rates have steadily increased to 26,673 reported cases in 1992, and some have estimated that by the year 2000, there could be a twenty percent increase. By 1993, Congress, realizing that TB could pose a major public health threat, allocated over $100 million to the Department of Health and Human Services for TB prevention and treatment programs. Those funds, however, were sorely needed years before and amounted to only a fraction of what public health officials believe necessary to control TB today.

Three Famous School Board Members

1931 ◽  
Vol 113 (20) ◽  
pp. 527-528
Author(s):  
Albert E. Winship
Keyword(s):  
School Board ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Board Members

Famous School Board Members

1931 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-33
Author(s):  
J. L. van Norman ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Albert E. Winship
Keyword(s):  
School Board ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Board Members

Three Famous School Board Members

1931 ◽  
Vol 113 (9) ◽  
pp. 246-246
Author(s):  
Albert E. Winship
Keyword(s):  
School Board ◽  
Board Members ◽  
School Board Members

Revealing public opinion towards COVID-19 vaccines with Twitter data in the United States: a spatiotemporal perspective (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Hu ◽  
Siqin Wang ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Mengxi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Spatiotemporal Trends ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Events

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the US and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines by investigating the spatiotemporal trends of their sentiment and emotion towards vaccines, as well as how such trends relate to popular topics on Twitter in the US METHODS We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the US from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified three phases along the pandemic timeline with the significant changes of public sentiment and emotion, further linking to eleven key events and major topics as the potential drivers to induce such changes via cloud mapping of keywords and topic modelling RESULTS An increasing trend of positive sentiment in parallel with the decrease of negative sentiment are generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the eight types of emotion implies the trustiness and anticipation of the public to vaccination, accompanied by the mixture of fear, sadness and anger. Critical social/international events and/or the announcements of political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on the public opinion on vaccines. These factors, along with important topics and manual reading of popular posts on eleven key events, help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis CONCLUSIONS The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics and promote the confidence of individuals within a certain region or community, towards vaccines

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document