What Holds A School Together
Issue 41 | WHAT HOLDS A SCHOOL TOGETHER
Staff Shortages and Culture — Part Three
June came. You made it. You sat in the parking lot on the last day and asked yourself — honestly — how.
The year had cost the building three long-term vacancies, eleven short-term substitute days with zero coverage, four teachers who hit the wall hard enough that you worried about them coming back, and one position that had been posted, re-posted, and posted a third time before you finally hired someone in April who would spend the rest of the year learning the job on the job.
The kids were fine. Mostly.
That phrase — the kids were fine — carries a lot of weight you don’t always unpack. Fine compared to what? Fine means they made it, they passed, they graduated, they moved on. It doesn’t mean they got the year they were owed.
You know the difference.
Sitting in the parking lot on the last day, you started doing what school leaders do — the accounting. Not the budget. The human accounting. Who held the line when it was hardest? Who picked up the extra class without being asked twice? Who covered the hallway before anyone knew it needed covering? Who made the difficult kids their business even when they didn’t have to?
You could name every one of them.
That’s what holds a school together in a year like this. Not the system. Not the district. Not the official organizational chart. The people who decide, without being asked, that the building is their responsibility. The veteran teacher who sees a student wandering the hall during coverage chaos and takes her into her classroom without a word. The counselor who stays until 6 PM because a student needed someone and the parent wasn’t available. The custodian who notices things and tells you — quietly, off the record — what the kids are actually saying.
They are not in any position description. There is no rubric for what they do.
The aftermath of a staff shortage year is when you take stock of that. Not in a newsletter. In a conversation. Face to face, one person at a time.
Before school ended you made a list. Not of things to fix — though you have that list too. A list of the people who held the building together. And you made time to find each of them and say, without making it a moment or a ceremony, just a real thing: “I know what you did this year. I know what it cost you. I’m grateful.”
Most of them said it was fine. That’s often what people say when they’re too tired to process being seen.
Say it anyway.
The systemic problems — the shortage, the market, the pipeline, the working conditions that drive people out — those are not yours to solve alone. You are one principal. You can advocate. You can be vocal. You can refuse to treat the shortage as something to manage quietly and accept. But you cannot fix it by Thursday.
What you can fix is culture. A building where people feel seen, where extra effort is acknowledged, where the principal makes time to say “I noticed” — that building retains people. Not perfectly. Not completely. But better than a building where the extra mile goes unremarked and the people who ran it finish the year feeling invisible.
The new teacher you hired in April is coming back in August. She called to tell you.
You didn’t expect that.
She said: “You checked in on me almost every week. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. You kept asking how I was doing and I think that made a difference.”
That’s the whole job, sometimes. Not the strategy. Not the system. Just someone who keeps asking.
TRANSFERABLE PRINCIPLE
After a year like this, the accounting that matters most is not the one in the budget. It’s the human one. Who held the line? Who picked up what wasn’t theirs? Say their names to them, directly, before the year ends. The shortage is real and it’s structural and it isn’t your fault. What is your fault — in the good sense — is whether the people who kept your building running knew that you saw them. That’s not soft leadership. That’s good culture and the reason people come back.
Until next time — the chair is yours.