Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. It’s a simple phrase that served Craig Maniglia, director of communications for Sarasota County (Fla.) Schools well over the last month as the district faced building damages, washed out roads, school closures, transforming school sites into shelters and distribution centers and more.

“Being in Florida, we have plans in place for dealing with hurricanes,” said Maniglia. “But the impact of devastating back-to-back storms isn’t something that can be fully prepared for.”

From satellite phones and two-way radios to visiting student homes and setting up camp at a local radio station powered by generators, Maniglia and his school communicator colleagues in districts throughout the southeastern United States found themselves providing more than just critical updates to their school communities during Hurricane Helene in late September and Hurricane Milton in October. For many, the information served as a lifeline as they navigated fear, loss and uncertainty.

A Crisis on the Horizon

As the pathway of Helene became clear, Marion County (Fla.) Public Schools began to prepare. 

“We weren’t predicted to be in the storm’s direct path,” said Kevin Christian, APR, CPRC, director of public relations for the district. “But we’re a host county for evacuees in coastal communities and our schools serve as emergency shelters for them.” 

MCPS announced on Tuesday, Sept. 24, that its schools would be closed on Thursday. By Wednesday afternoon, evacuees in the Florida coastal communities were able to begin taking shelter at a district high school.

Meanwhile, Bailey Little, director of communications for Watauga County Schools in Boone, N.C., was also tuning into weather reports for Helene, but from faraway Alaska where she was on pre-scheduled vacation. Initial projections called for heavy rain and flash floods in the area.

“Boone is in the mountains, and we don’t see hurricanes here,” Little said. “We expected to have to close schools for rain and flooding for maybe a day or two.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Little’s district announced early dismissal plans for Thursday in anticipation of the weather. Early the next morning, however, a full day closure was announced and schools began to prepare to serve as distribution centers. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, students would not return to school for nearly a month.

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Weathering Helene

Helene made landfall on the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 26, and it became clear that Boone was in the midst of an unprecedented weather crisis.

Little stayed connected with WCS from Alaska as much as possible before flying home early. As the storm passed through, the area was left with sinkholes, landslides, washed out roads and destroyed homes.

In the immediate aftermath, Little said, principals and staff members reached out to every student and staff member to check in. With power lines down and phone service shaky, those check-ins included some principals knocking on doors at students' homes.

What followed were daily updates – sometimes multiple updates daily – from the district to keep the school community informed.

“Our leadership team was meeting every day to continually assess the damage and the needs of our school community,” said Little. As power and services continued to experience outages, WCS’ social media pages on Facebook and X became a primary vehicle for messaging, as well as for telling stories from around the community, like highlighting employees who were helping in the hurricane recovery process. Little made a conscious decision to keep comments enabled. 

“It’s very easy to be afraid of getting negative comments on posts about updates or district decisions on social media,” she said. “But seeing the feedback from parents and the community was important. Comments allowed me to understand immediately if people were confused by anything or needed more information about something.”

This would become critical as the community faced devastation from Hurricane Milton just weeks later.

Three weeks in a row, WCS announced that schools would be closed the following week. Much of the messaging, though, focused on community resources. “Our high school was turned into a distribution center, and an elementary school served as a childcare center,” Little said. “Three of our schools began operating as feeding sites, and we had cafeteria staff serving meals and providing bags of non-perishable food to residents.”

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Two hours up the road from WCS in Asheville, N.C., Ken Ulmer, chief communications officer for Buncombe County Schools, was incredulous as he and his team began preparing for Helene. “We don’t experience these kinds of weather events in the mountains,” he said, echoing Little’s outlook.

On Wednesday, Sept. 25, BCS announced that schools would be closed on Thursday and Friday. On Friday morning, Ulmer said, he woke up to devastation. “I don’t think any of us understood the full scope of what we’d be facing.” By that afternoon, all cellular service had gone down. Having last touched base with his superintendent earlier that day, Ulmer needed to find a way to connect with district leadership and continue crisis communication efforts.

“I started walking up and down my neighborhood, checking in on my neighbors and asking if anyone knew of roads that were still passable to get into town,” he said. He learned of a bridge that was still standing and made his way downtown where he found a weak cell phone signal and got in touch with his team. With traditional communication methods of text, phone calls and email unreliable, Ulmer set up camp at the local radio station, which was running on generator power. It happened to be the first place he worked after college.

“During that first week, we really relied on radio airwaves to get messaging out,” he said. BCS school leaders and teachers made their way to school sites where they met families, who were looking for information to provide them with resources.

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Along Comes Milton

Two weeks after providing shelter for evacuees from coastal Florida communities, Marion County Public Schools found itself preparing for Hurricane Milton. Unlike during Helene, the area was projected to be directly in the pathway of Milton. With the storm predicted to make landfall on Wednesday, Oct. 9, Marion County Emergency Management services began holding meetings the prior Saturday to prepare. District leadership was there.

“We work hand in hand with county emergency services,” said Christian. “Having an existing, positive relationship with community partners and government makes all the difference in a crisis.”

On Sunday, MCPS announced school closures for Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, Friday was added as a closure day. By Tuesday evening, 10 schools had been transformed into emergency shelters for residents. The district’s transportation department worked in partnership with the county health department to shuttle residents with special needs to shelters.

When providing ongoing, updated messaging during a crisis, Christian takes a strategic, three-prong approach. First, working in partnership with the county’s emergency services team, messaging about school operations and closures are sent to families by the district. Messaging is shared via MCPS’ mass notification system using text messages, phone calls and email, as well as posted to the district’s website and social media platforms.

“Our school community wants to hear from us first,” he said. “Getting information directly from the district before hearing about it somewhere else gives us a credibility and trust that is priceless.” 

Next, Christian shares that information with the county’s emergency services team, which then provides it to the wider community along with additional messaging of their own. Finally, all messaging is provided to a citizen’s hotline that is activated in the area during severe weather events, where live operators are able to provide assistance and resources to residents.

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According to Maniglia in Sarasota County, to say it’s been a hectic month would be an understatement. His district, Sarasota County Schools, had closed three days for Helene in September and had to prepare for a second hurricane to hit the area just two weeks later. 

In advance of the storm’s mid-week landfall, SCS and local municipalities began working together on planning and messaging over the prior weekend.

“We met every day before the storm, up to three times a day,” Maniglia said, to ensure everyone was operating with the same information and not duplicating efforts.

“We began messaging about Hurricane Milton days before it hit,” said Maniglia. “We sent text messages and emails, made phone calls and posted updates and banners on our website, providing information about both school closures and where to find emergency resources.”

Expecting power to be down during the storm, SCS also kept in close contact with media outlets and moved the executive cabinet and critical district leaders to a central location with generator power. Social media and local television outlets became crucial to continue communication efforts and correcting false information and rumors.

“We had a plan and were able to stay at the forefront of providing information to our school community,” Maniglia said. SCS held joint press conferences with government officials and emergency responders, and had a team monitoring district social media platforms 24 hours a day. 

“If someone posted a comment or question on our social media pages asking for information, someone was available to provide an immediate response,” said Maniglia. “If it was a question we couldn’t answer, we were at least able to point them in the right direction.” 

With district employees helping to manage shelters at school sites, leadership held a roll call three times a day via two-way radios to check in and provide assistance when needed. “A lesson learned during a previous weather event was to have powerful two-way radios on hand,” said Maniglia. “There was never an interruption in connectivity, and our staff at shelters were never in the dark.”

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Recovery and Support

Students in Buncombe County and Watauga County in North Carolina and Sarasota County and Marion County in Florida have all started returning to school. Preparing for that return was a herculean communication effort in itself.

District transportation leaders worked to alter bus routes that were affected by washed out bridges and roads that no longer exist. In Sarasota, a survey was sent to district staff to understand which personnel were in need of continued assistance as well as to assess and prepare for staffing impacts at schools. 

Recovering from catastrophe won’t be easy. More than 200 counselors were on hand for the return of students and teachers in Buncombe County this week. Temporary relocation sites had to be established for schools that were too damaged to return to in Watauga County.

“Events like this impact families in so many different ways,” said Ulmer in BCS. “Families have suffered the loss of loved ones and the loss of homes, and families have been isolated from the community and their schools. We have to approach every communication with every family with grace and understanding.”

As recovery efforts continue, the four school communicators all share a similar sentiment: Often out of great devastation, the best in humanity emerges.

One needs only to peek at the social media platforms of districts impacted by the hurricanes to see countless examples of staff, students and community members coming together. From teachers volunteering at shelters to students organizing supply drives, pictures and stories reflect a spirit of resilience and unity.

“Weather events like this are awful,” Maniglia said in SCS. “But they can also bring out the best in our communities. I take great comfort in knowing I’m part of a community where neighbors are helping neighbors and students are helping students. It can be easy to lose sight of that.”

Ulmer agrees. “Little acts of kindness during a horrific event are reminders that through terrible, awful circumstances, you can also find the best in people.” 

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Future Planning

“In every storm, lessons are learned,” says Maniglia. Debrief meetings to evaluate the response in an effort to be even more prepared for next time have already begun in the district.

For Bailey Little in Watauga County, capturing the stories of volunteers and school communities coming together will continue to be something she prioritizes in future crises.

Ken Ulmer in Buncombe County underscores the importance of transparent and authentic communication. For example, while the district didn’t immediately announce a reopening date, they were sure to include the why in all messaging. 

“We didn’t want to provide a reopening date that we didn’t know we could meet,” said Ulmer. “But we always kept our community informed about the reasoning behind our decisions. Our families really did appreciate knowing that in a time of uncertainty.”

For Kevin Christian, APR, CPRC, in Marion County, the mindset of flexibility will be key for future weather events, just as it has been over the last month. 

“You have to be willing to adjust in situations like this,” he said. “Early planning and providing information as soon as possible is always best practice, but so too is providing room for flexibility in decision making processes to account for unforeseen changes.”

The unpredictable requires school leaders to make tough decisions quickly. 

“Would I consider everything I did over the last month to be a best practice? Who knows?” says Maniglia. “We may look back and identify a gazillion things we could do better in the future. But in the moment, when there is no playbook, we did the best we could with the information we had, led by an incredibly supportive leadership team. I hope we can look back and know that we served our students, staff and families well.”

Within the NSPRA community, it’s likely all school communication professionals would agree these communicators delivered exceptional service during their districts’ hurricane crises.