COVID-19 Turning Headwinds into Tailwinds

By Dr. Barrett Mosbacker

July 19, 2020

Are you ready for the new normal?"

While we do not know with certainty what the long-term impacts of the pandemic will be, we can say with confidence that there will be a new normal presenting unique challenges and opportunities. As Andy Crouch and his colleagues have written in their excellent essay, Leading Beyond the Blizzard: Why Every Organization Is Now a Startup:

We believe every leader and organization — every nonprofit, every church, every school, every business — should be planning for scenarios that include years-long disruption. Almost all of us are in a new business. From today onward, most leaders must recognize that the business they were in no longer exists. This applies not just to for-profit businesses, but to nonprofits and even in certain important respects to churches …

Even if we can return to something like the “normalcy” of 2019, but with our programs and services, business playbooks, and even our relationships purified by creative scrutiny, our organizations will be far stronger … (emphasis added)

Responsible leaders have no choice today but to assume that the winter is upon us, and an ice age of unknown duration is before us. We are playing a game no one now living has ever played before. We are, for reasons only God knows, on the front line, on the starting team. Let us act boldly today to build as best we can, for the love of our neighbor and the glory of God.

Unique and difficult challenges await us in the new school year. Unique opportunities also await us. We have an unprecedented opportunity to use this crisis for good — accomplishing what one head of school described as something that “under normal circumstances would have taken three years and $150,000 in consulting fees to accomplish.”

Our tasks are to simultaneously stabilize our schools’ enrollment and financial situations while strategically seizing the opportunity to enhance our programs, our service to parents, and our position in the education market for the new normal. We must become more creative, agile, modular, flexible, and responsive to the new realities — and we must increase our value proposition. I foresee the following sociological, economic, and parent expectation changes confronting us.

Sociological

People will be more cautious about personal hygiene, interpersonal interactions, and larger gatherings.

People will be more apt to maintain some form of social distancing for a long period of time, perhaps permanently. Handshaking, for example, may become less common.

Until there is a vaccine, we will face disruptions to our ability to gather in large groups. Intermittent school closings are possible, even likely.

Economic

• The economic disruption will make many people more conservative with their money. Savings will increase.
• Donors may have lost wealth or become increasingly conservative about giving. Others may be more motivated to give in order to sustain the future of our schools.
• Unemployment and under-employment will remain high for a long period of time.
• Many small businesses will never recover.
• Stockpiling essentials and emergency supplies will become more common.
• Remote working, video conferencing, and reduced travel will be more prevalent.
• Current students — tomorrow’s parents — are experiencing both the educational disruption and the economic impacts of the pandemic on their families and futures. This will shape their approach to personal finances and their decisions about private education and college. Research has shown that millennials are approaching middle age in worse financial shape than every preceding living generation, lagging behind baby boomers and Generation X despite a decade of economic growth and falling unemployment. Hobbled by the financial crisis and recession that struck as they began their working lives, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 have accumulated less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates, and fewer children than earlier generations of young adults. This financial reality will inform how the next generation of parents evaluates the cost and value of private education.

Parent Expectations and the New Education Market

• Parents will be reexamining the value and return on investment of private school tuition.
• Parents, students, and staff will expect rigorous sanitization and hygiene practices at the school.
• Community, student activities, and face-to-face instruction will be more appreciated than ever.
• Paradoxically, parents and students will be more open to — and will have higher expectations of — quality online instruction when disruptions occur.
• After the pandemic passes, parents will expect more instructional options and flexibility in the school schedule. Schools that offer meaningful customization will prosper. The current school calendar and schedule is based on an agrarian or industrial model. More parents will expect an information-age hybrid model offering a combination of on-campus and online courses and a flexible path to graduation.
• Every student going forward will need to learn how to learn effectively online, given that most universities and colleges will increase their number of online course offerings.
• Our faculty and staff must become proficient in delivering interactive, effective online instruction.
• Our training and infrastructure must be capable of supporting an excellent hybrid model that combines on-campus with online instruction.

While the above are reasonable assumptions, what is certain is that change is not optional for our schools. We are facing a once-in-a-lifetime disruption to our business model and an opportunity for strategic creativity that demands a response. As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great:

Enduring great institutions practice the principle of Preserve the Core and Stimulate Progress, separating core values and fundamental purpose — which should never change — from mere operating practices, cultural norms, and business strategies, which endlessly adapt to a changing world. (Emphasis added)

Similarly, researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review have observed that the pandemic experiment may show that four-year, face-to-face college education can no longer rest on its laurels. A variety of factors — most notably the continuously increasing cost of tuition, already out of reach for most families — suggest that the post-secondary education market is ripe for disruption. The coronavirus crisis may be that disruption. How institutions experiment, test, record, and understand their responses to it now will determine whether and how online education develops as an opportunity for the future.

This is equally true of private K–12 education. While we were facing headwinds before the pandemic, and while the challenges we now face are even greater, we also have the opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the competition and increase the value we provide to our families by offering flexible, robust, and customizable programs.

New Instructional Programs for the New Realities

We have an unprecedented opportunity to use this pandemic for good. That good will take the form of flexible, dynamic, and innovative programs that create new opportunities for our students long after the pandemic is behind us. Our on-campus programs will always be our primary and best means of providing a high-quality Christian education within Christian community. We must, however, enhance the value of that education by offering flexible options when they are needed or desired by our families and students.

1. Hybrid Options

One such option is a hybrid program. There are many definitions of hybrid courses, hybrid schools, and hybrid schedules. What I have in mind are programs that provide students the flexibility to participate in one or more courses online during certain periods, even when the campus is fully open. An example might be a student who tests positive for Covid-19 and must quarantine for two weeks. Or it might be a particularly gifted student who wishes to accelerate his or her learning and spend time off campus for internships or international travel. The possibilities extend far beyond the present crisis.

2. Improved Online Learning

Although most of us are optimistic about returning to normal in-person instruction for the coming school year, we should be investing significant time and resources now to ensure an improved online learning experience for our students and parents. Over the past several months, teachers in our schools have made significant strides in effectively delivering content online — but most of our schools can do better. We must commit to delivering high-quality, interactive programs superior to what other schools offer.

Private schools, including our Christian schools, were facing strong headwinds before the pandemic. The pandemic has forced us to turn into the wind and face facts that too many of us have been ignoring or addressing far too slowly. We must face these realities and convert the headwinds before us into tailwinds that accelerate our adoption of innovative programs and practices. If we do not, many of our schools will slowly decline.

The world has changed and is changing, and we must change with it. The pandemic has accelerated a disruption that was already underway in the education market. If we fail to respond to the new realities, we risk becoming the next Blockbuster — failing to recognize the threat of a new delivery model — or the retailer who could not comprehend the disruption posed by a new competitor until it was too late. As Jim Collins records in Good to Great, one executive put it plainly:

When you turn over rocks and look at all the squiggly things underneath, you can either put the rock down, or you can say, “My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things,” even if what you see can scare the hell out of you.

The pandemic has turned the rock over for us.

It is our responsibility as leaders not merely to look at what lies beneath, but to take that knowledge and move our schools toward a brighter, more flexible, and more innovative future. The fulfillment of our missions and our long-term viability depend on it.

Is your school ready for the new realities? Carpe diem.