A Hot Mess at Home Prevented Them From Discussing It Here

There was more than a bit of irony involved in the cancellation of an Illinois-based superintendent who was scheduled to present in Nashville on crisis communications.

Lori Riley, superintendent of Woodland School District 50 in Gurnee, Ill., and her director of communications, Brooke Hagstrom, were set to talk about crisis communications on Thursday morning at a roundtable session. But two days earlier, they realized brewing matters at hand would not allow them to travel.

Reported Hagstrom in an e-mail: “We have some issues going on in our school district, and my superintendent and board president have decided that we are no longer able to come to the conference. … In Illinois, schools have become heated battlegrounds for the mask issue. There is a big lawsuit (in which we are named) currently in appeal and we are expecting a ruling to come down on Thursday or Friday, and our Board of Education will (likely) be calling an emergency board meeting. And on top of it, we are expecting a big snow and ice storm on Thursday and may need to call a snow day or eLearning Day.”

On top of all that, a parent protest rally was also a possibility this week.

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An Early Morning Run Around the Neighborhood in Nashville

About 10 early-arriving participants in the AASA national conference put in a little physical activity in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday.

They logged a few miles and smiles as part of what organizer Noelle Ellerson Ng, AASA’s public policy honcho, termed the “Officially Unofficial Fun Run.”

The roughly 5-kilometer run — supposedly fitting for all fitness levels — took the joggers past the pro football stadium where the Tennessee Titans play their games and a nearby bridge with the rising sun on the horizon.

(Compiled by Jay P. Goldman, editor-in-chief of Conference Daily Online and editor of AASA’s School Administrator.)