Education Week - March 5, 2014 - Leaders to Learn From - S35

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
Nicholas Gledich
SUPERINTENDENT
Colorado Springs District 11, Colorado
BY EVIE BLAD
N
icholas Gledich admits he's a pretty big fan
of catchphrases.
The superintendent of Colorado Springs District
11, in Colorado, peppers his discussions about the
direction of the district with mantras like "think
win-win" and "listen first, talk second, manage by
facts."
The phrases, which he refers to as "guiding prin-
ciples," help building leaders and administrators
understand his philosophy and make his approach
to decisions more transparent, he said.
One of those phrases-"whatever it takes"-took
on new meaning in June 2012, when the Waldo
Canyon wildfire raged about four miles outside the
city, threatening homes and schools in the region.
Mr. Gledich led the district's leaders in a quick and
comprehensive response, assembled in a few days.
And when a fire threatened a neighboring school
system a year later, he mobilized district officials
to share their battle-tested strategies with their
colleagues there.
Mr. Gledich, 60, worked in the Orange County,
Fla., school district from 1977 to 2009 before
taking his first superintendent job in Colorado
Springs, a 28,000-student district with a view of
the Rocky Mountains where 57 percent of students
qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
He worked as an elementary teacher, a princi-
pal, a senior director responsible for more than 30
schools, an assistant superintendent for instructional
programs, and a chief operations officer before
leaving the Florida district.
Along the way, he developed a knack for careful
planning and considering multiple courses of action,
Mr. Gledich said.
"As a classroom teacher, you are constantly
developing your lesson plans and you're developing
your tools that you have to have in place
to monitor the success of your lesson plans," he
said. "That's not too different from what you do
as a principal or as a project manager, for that
matter."
When the Waldo Canyon fire first threatened
to leap over its containment line and into the district's
boundaries, Mr. Gledich assembled administrators
and building leaders, who worked quickly
to save student records, attend to the needs of
families, and find space for 1,500 firefighters and
forest workers to set up shop in school buildings
and parking lots.
"He said, 'Whatever you need, whatever you
want, we're there to help,' " said Glenn E. Gustafson,
the district's chief financial officer. "We
said, this is big. It's really going to be bad if it ever
comes over that hill. We've got to do the right thing
by the community."
As the fire neared the district, dark clouds of
smoke hung over the city, building fear in residents
and threatening to frighten those who confronted
the disaster.
And as Mr. Gledich worked to confront challenges
in logistics, personnel, and facilities, he
faced the threat of losing his own home.
When emergency workers evacuated the Mountain
Shadows neighborhood, where the superintendent
and many district families lived, Mr.
Gledich and his wife took refuge in a hotel. The
hotel was later evacuated, too, as the fire spread.
Eventually, the couple camped out at Mr. Gustafson's
home. They later learned that the fire had
burned the houses on each side of them, but theirs
was still standing.
But Mr. Gledich was more focused on the schools
located in the fire's potential impact zone than on
his own home, said school board President LuAnn
Long, who was in touch with Mr. Gledich during
the crisis.
The superintendent said he grew concerned by
the possibility of the fire's impact early on, even
when it wasn't clear whether the flames would
reach the district.
"You could see the smoke in the evenings, some-
times you could even see the fire," Mr. Gledich said.
"I just asked the question in a cabinet meeting,
'What could go wrong?' and the answer was that
the fire could go over the canyon and come into
the city."
From Rescue to Recovery
Leaders quickly formed a plan.
Aside from life, the worst loss to the district
would be student records, the cabinet determined
before quickly securing them. The team also closed
buildings and began converting a middle school to
a "base camp" for firefighters, who slept in class-
LEADERS TO LEARN FROM > leaders.edweek.org
EDUCATION WEEK * March 5, 2014
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Nathan W. Armes for Education Week
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Education Week - March 5, 2014 - Leaders to Learn From

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