Crisis leadership in Georgia: Navigating policy, people, and dual pandemics in K-12 education

This research investigated how K-12 school and district leaders in Georgia enacted leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on interviews with 11 educational leaders (10 of whom identified as African American), this study explored how proximity to policy and people shaped leaders’ actions and understandings of crisis leadership. Findings reveal that while all participants experienced the pandemic as an acute and ongoing emergency, their leadership diverged sharply by role. District leaders focused on maintaining system level legitimacy, policy coherence, and infrastructure stability, while school leaders engaged in the daily emotional and cultural labor of holding communities together through care and connection. Across contexts, crisis leadership emerged as a multifaceted practice requiring decisive action and deliberate attention to personal well-being. For Black leaders, the work was further shaped by the racialized dynamics of leading through dual pandemics. These findings position crisis leadership as an enduring practice shaped by leaders’ proximity to policy decisions and the people they serve as well as by the emotional relationships that define their work.