Leadership Matters May 2014 working doc

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“I have a deeper understanding of how important a school is to its community. Our schools and churches became beacons of normalcy, direction and hope to a community rocked by disaster. I am certainly proud to serve as superintendent and will continue to work side-by- side with our community to support the recovery efforts.” — Central District #51 Superintendent Chad Allaman, who lost his Washington home in the November 2013 tornado

“Second, we have an outstanding school community. Our Board of Education, staff members and parents came together to do whatever it took to reopen our schools and meet the needs of our students, staff and parents. Finally, we had a lot of support from the City of Washington and organizations such as IASA. Three of the first four people I spoke with in the aftermath of the tornado were superintendents, and city officials worked tirelessly to assist us in allowing contractors in to our facilities and grounds to make needed repairs.” The schools’ role as the glue that binds a community together was never more pronounced than in the days and weeks following the tornado. “I believe that it has shown the community just how important the schools are to everyone’s well-

being,” Martin said. “Our goal was to get students back into school asquickly as possible so that it could assist in two ways: to begin the process of getting back to a normal routine…whatever that would look like, and to provide a place for students to go so that parents could begin the process of salvaging, making plans for temporary housing and rebuilding homes. A lot of the schools were used as gathering places and a lot of coordination was done through support of our individual staffs.” Allaman said the whole experience of having plans and lives altered in literally a few seconds just

reinforced his core beliefs that faith and family are most important, that “things” can be replaced, but you cannot replace people and pets. But he said it did changehis viewas a school superintendent. “I have a deeper understanding of how important a school is to its community,” Allaman said. “Our schools and churches became beacons of normalcy, direction and hope to a community rocked by disaster. I am certainly proud to serve as superintendent and will continue to work side-by-side withour community to support the recovery efforts.”

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