#SchoolPR Insights Blog

In AASA’s School Administrator, Jennifer Cheatham highlights a fundamental shift: today’s superintendents must serve as civic leaders who build coalitions, navigate disagreement, and unite communities around a shared vision for public education.

Effective civic leadership is rooted in intentional communication—listening, conveying complex issues clearly, and earning public trust. However, superintendents cannot lead effectively if bogged down by day-to-day communication mechanics. Communications capacity creates leadership capacity.

At the Donovan Group, we partner exclusively with public school leaders to provide flexible, strategic communications infrastructure. Whether serving as a full-service communications office or augmenting existing internal teams, we offer specialized expertise—from crisis communication to community engagement and strategic planning—at an affordable cost.

Listening as a Leadership Strategy

Navigating complex budgets, enrollment shifts, and polarized public debates requires listening first. Rather than a passive exercise, intentional listening is a proactive, strategic tool that allows superintendents to gain deep insights into community sentiment, anticipate potential resistance, and align district initiatives with stakeholder priorities.

Through quantitative research, surveys, and focus groups, we help districts gather actionable data. However, this process goes far beyond simple data collection—it serves as a critical foundation for building genuine public trust, demonstrating responsiveness, and ensuring that strategic plans are authentically grounded in community expectations.

Creating Space to Lead

By managing communications around major initiatives, bond measures, and operational challenges, we allow superintendents to focus on their unique role: building authentic relationships, articulating vision, and driving meaningful change.

Working with Dr. Devin Serrano, superintendent of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District (PVPUSD) in California, the Donovan Group provided communications support leading up to and following the passage of the district’s bond measure in November 2024. This support allowed Dr. Serrano and the Board to keep the community informed throughout the process.

Similarly, our 2024-25 communication audit and planning with Saucon Valley School District (PA) provided the necessary framework for district leaders to focus on strategic long-term goals, including the publication of their Annual Report. In Crete-Monee School District 201-U (IL), our partnership on 2024 strategic planning and communications, including their Marketing & Engagement Plan, enabled leaders to effectively align their vision with community expectations.

The individual communications products matter. But the larger value is the capacity created around district leadership.

This does not make the superintendent less involved in communications. It allows the superintendent to be more strategically involved—focusing on the work only they can do: listening to community members, building relationships, engaging employees and civic leaders, explaining consequential decisions, and articulating a vision for the district.

That is what we mean when we say communications capacity creates leadership capacity.

Building Trust Before It Is Needed

Civic leadership becomes even more important when a district is under pressure.

Through the Donovan Group’s crisis communications partnerships with statewide education organizations in 13 states—including 10 statewide superintendent and school administrator associations—and with our individual school district partners, we provide school leaders with experienced communications counsel when situations move quickly and the stakes are high.

That work continually reinforces something we have long believed: Trust built during ordinary times becomes indispensable during extraordinary ones.

Trust cannot be manufactured once a crisis begins. It accumulates through the interactions that precede it—whether leaders communicate regularly, listen, acknowledge difficult realities, explain their decisions, and treat people with honesty and respect.

Communications as Leadership Infrastructure

The superintendent as civic leader is not ultimately a communications concept. It is a leadership concept.

But civic leadership requires an infrastructure for listening, engaging, explaining, and building trust. A strong strategic communications function helps provide that infrastructure.

Sometimes that capacity exists entirely within a district. Sometimes an outside partner provides it. Increasingly, we see districts combining the two—maintaining talented communications professionals internally while drawing on outside capacity and specialized expertise when needed.

For superintendents, that creates something increasingly scarce—the time and space to lead.

It means spending less time managing the mechanics of communication and more time doing the deeply human work Cheatham describes: being present, listening, convening, building relationships, navigating differences, and creating a shared sense of purpose around public education.

At a moment when public schools face extraordinary challenges, creating that capacity may be one of the most practical ways we can help superintendents become the civic leaders their communities need.