Communicating sad news about a beloved leader

How a Texas school district handled its role after an ex-superintendent lost his life

Working in a public school district presents a variety of communication challenges, both good and bad. Most of them occur during the school year and mostly involve explaining administrative, student, financial, or facility situations and decisions.

Unfortunately for our district, a recent challenge involved the death of the newly retired superintendent, and it happened over the summer.

Losing a high-profile community leader

The Mansfield Independent School District community was shocked to learn of the death of Vernon Newsom. Mr. Newsom, who retired June 30 from the district, died from injuries he suffered in a motorcycle accident in South Dakota while on his first post-retirement vacation with his wife.

As a way for me to process my grief, I wanted to take an opportunity to share the reinforced or learned communications techniques from this somber experience: