Opportunities for Trust Building in Times of Discord

Trust, built over time, can be lost in a moment. Temporal and fragile, it is vulnerable to missteps, miscommunication, and mischief. Today’s school leaders operate in charged political environments fraught with controversies often sparked by design to sew discord and skepticism. Even for established and respected leaders with strong school-community relationships, today’s climate makes trust a tenuous commodity.

Public schools have been under scrutiny for at least since the A Nation at Risk report was published in 1983 and perhaps before that when in 1954 economist Milton Friedman called for reduced investment in “government schools” while providing parents with choice through vouchers (Friedman, 1955).