For K12 entrepreneurs: What’s going to happen to schools and districts in the age of coronavirus?

The headlines are inescapable. The novel coronavirus is on the rise in the U.S. and across the globe. We’re just starting to see some of the health and economic effects of this pandemic. Just this week, the U.S. reported more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19 with many more expected, the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic, major sporting events have been canceled or postponed, a 30-day ban on travel from most of Europe has been implemented, and some schools are starting to close because of concerns about the coronavirus. Things are developing at a dizzying pace and there’s more to come.

Now, no one knows for sure what’s going to happen to K12 schools and districts across the country. There is no precedent for this, but I think there are some insights that we can infer from looking at what’s happening in Seattle, the ground zero for the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. The Northshore School District is just 30 minutes outside of Seattle and is in the middle of the outbreak. The district closed school on March 3rd to train teachers in preparation for moving school from the “classroom to the cloud.” As of Monday, March 9th, the district’s 23,000 students are staying home and taking classes online. It’s a bold attempt to transition to remote learning out of necessity.

Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education wrote a wonderful piece in T74 about the amazing work of Northshore’s superintendent, Dr. Michelle Reid, and her team to prepare for a radical transition to remote learning for the district’s 23,000 students, 3,000 employees, and tens of thousands of parents and community members. I encourage you to read it because it’s an example of the tremendous work that school leaders are doing to prepare for this unprecedented challenge. Looking at Northshore’s actions gives us a window into what is likely to happen in districts across the country in weeks and months ahead. Here are some observations:

1. Services that help schools prepare for remote learning will be in high demand. I’m thinking about things such as teacher training, technology tools that enable remote learning, provisions for special education services, and support services for childcare will be among the most in demand supports. Several big tech companies are even offering free remote tools to help during this crisis.
2. Coronavirus is a forcing function for school and district innovation. They say “necessity is the mother of invention” and we have a clear and obvious need to create remote learning experiences for students at scale. If there was ever a “need” to shift to digital learning, this is it.
3. District leaders and teachers will be completely consumed in preparing for the move from the “classroom to the cloud.” It moves to the top of their list and everything else falls back.
4. As a result of being completely consumed by this radical change, any business activity that doesn’t help schools prepare for this transition will likely come to a temporary, if not prolonged standstill. All non-essential purchases and innovations will be affected.

If your startup addresses the first bullet point, you’re in a good position to help district teachers and leaders through the change process. Companies like Presence Learning, Pear Deck, and Paper fall into this category.

It’s the last bullet point where many K12 entrepreneurs will find themselves and should be the focus of thoughtful planning now. How will you prepare your team for a potentially large disruption to your business? What plans can you put in place to weather the impending storm? Can you position your company to be a valuable resource for schools and districts in their pursuit of remote learning? How should you think about sales and marketing in this time of unprecedented change and uncertainty?

In the spirit of being brief, we’ll examine these questions and more in several upcoming posts. What other big picture questions are you thinking about? What steps have you and/or your company already taken regarding the pandemic?