Strategic Leadership among Schools Amid COVID-19
Mark Denver M. Dantes
Operating schools and delivering quality education through the various learning delivery modalities (LDMs) in this time of Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been a herculean task for school administrators. Education must continue, and leaders must be on-point in their decisions and actions being taken.
Every school in the country is caught unprepared in this kind of scenario in delivering education amid the onset of a global pandemic. Education systems are framed to have a new normal in learning deliveries, giving birth to the LDMs – from distance learning, homeschooling to blended learning. The DepEd has trained both the teaching and non-teaching personnel for the new normal and the school facilities and needed materials.
Like any other new scenario, the start of the School Year 2020-2021 brought many challenges and circumstances where even the brightest school administrators find difficulties in handling. Safety and health protocols are the top priorities in planning and decision-making. School leaders are then tasked to deliver the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP) during the national state of a health emergency (DO No. 12, s. 2020). It is a package of education interventions responsive to the challenges brought about by COVID-19 in delivering basic education, putting first the health, welfare, and safety of all the learners, teachers, and other personnel.
The crucial planning and decision-making aspect, tapping employees' expertise, and partnering with key stakeholders are integral to sustain school operations in these trying times. All such entail sound strategic leadership abilities by school administrators by putting into place the best interest for everyone, the school's visionmission, and attaining the desired education goals to transform them into credible actions or desirable results. It could translate as simple as doing the right action at the right time, transforming strategies into actions. Hence, school leaders must be a visionary, goal-oriented, communicable, analytical, strategic, critical thinker, flexible, creative or innovative, and task-oriented in performing their duties and mandates and transpire meaningful results. Delegation of work, outsourcing of resources, linkage and partnership to both private and public entities, research, and development may ease the fatal cost of operation with limited resources on-hand.
Strategic school leaders always emphasize the greater or common good. They still have the highest wisdom for school growth and moral obligations. Educators can see that strategic leadership can be a useful tool for educational reforms, especially in leveraging knowledge or ideas, technologies, interventions, and circumstances that may elevate the quality of services and institutionalize reforms needed to bring meaningful change educational system.
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The author is Head Teacher I at San Antonio Elem. School Proper, Bacolor South District