We Love the Comeback Story. We Just Don't Talk About Who Got Buried Making It Happen.
Week 2 of 53 · Turnaround · by Stephanie Kallis Meek, M.Ed.
We celebrate the comeback story.
We put it in the press release. We feature it at the board meeting. We name it in the grant application. The school that was failing and now it isn't. The data that moved. The trajectory that changed.
What we don't talk about is the person who walked into that building when it was on fire and got handed a garden hose.
I've watched turnaround principals treated like janitors for a mess they had no part in making. Handed a broken building, a demoralized staff, a community that has stopped believing, and a district that wants results on a timeline that has nothing to do with how human beings actually heal.
And when the story gets told later, if it gets told at all, the system takes the credit.
Turnaround is one of the most misused words in education. Not because people don't understand what it means. Because understanding it requires admitting things most systems aren't willing to say out loud.
What the word is actually doing
When a district calls a school a "turnaround school," what they are really saying is: this school has failed publicly, and we need a plan that looks like action.
Sometimes it is action. Sometimes it is theater.
The difference is whether anyone in power is willing to be honest about what created the failure in the first place. Because here's what I know from having stood inside those buildings: the school rarely failed in isolation. The school failed because of what surrounded it. Underfunding. High staff turnover that nobody addressed. Leadership changes every two years. A community dealing with concentrated poverty and trauma, and a system that kept responding with compliance paperwork.
Then someone gets put in charge of fixing it, and the clock starts.
The principal who gets the call
I want to talk specifically to the person who takes the job.
You know who you are. You said yes because you believed you could make it better. Maybe because you came from a school like it. Maybe because someone took a chance on you once and you've been paying it forward ever since. Maybe because you are stubborn in exactly the way this work requires.
You walked in and you found out fast that the data didn't tell the whole story. The staff was exhausted and had been given every reason to stop trusting the person in the principal's chair. The students were brilliant and dysregulated and nobody had ever given them both things at once. The parents were skeptical because skepticism was the only rational response to what they'd watched happen.
And the district? The district wanted to know what your plan was.
Your plan. For a problem that took years to build. That you inherited on day one.
The turnaround principal doesn't get handed a struggling school. They get handed the consequences of every decision the system made before they arrived.
What actually has to be true for turnaround to work
I'm not interested in offering false hope here. Real turnaround is possible. I've lived it. I've watched it happen. But it requires things that don't fit neatly into a board presentation.
It requires a district that tells the truth about its own role in creating the conditions. Not publicly, not necessarily, but at least privately and honestly with the leader they've put in place.
It requires a timeline that respects the pace of trust. You cannot build a culture in a semester. You cannot rebuild what adults believe about students, and what students believe about adults, on a 90-day improvement plan.
It requires that the principal be treated like a professional with expertise, not a contractor being handed a punch list.
And it requires someone asking regularly, genuinely, how the person leading it is doing. Not as a check-in. As a real question.
What you can hold onto if you're in it right now
If you are the person in that building right now, I want to say a few things directly to you.
The fact that it's hard doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Some of what you're carrying is the weight of a system that handed you its unfinished business. That's not your failure. That's your reality.
The staff who are hardest to reach are usually the ones who cared the most and got hurt the most. That's not an excuse for behavior that undermines the work. It is context that changes how you approach the conversation.
You are allowed to name what isn't working to the people above you. You are allowed to ask for what you need. The fact that it might not land doesn't mean you stop asking.
The students in your building are not a problem to be solved. They are the reason the work is worth doing even when everything around it is broken.
You need support that isn't coming from inside the system you are trying to change. Find it. Prioritize it. That's not selfish. That's how you last long enough to actually finish something.
And for the superintendents and board members reading this
You have more power in this equation than you often take responsibility for.
The person you put in that building is doing the work you said needed to be done. What they need from you is not a quarterly data review and a performance improvement framework.
They need you to ask hard questions about what the system contributed to the problem. They need you to protect them from the politics long enough for the work to breathe. They need you to give them the resources you promised when you made the ask.
And they need you to tell the whole story when things get better. Not just the number that moved. The person who moved it. And what it actually cost.
The comeback story is real. So is the person who made it happen while the system watched and waited to take credit.
Sit with these this week
If you are in a turnaround role right now, what is one thing you need from your district that you haven't asked for yet?
If you are a district leader, when did you last ask your turnaround principal what they actually need, and then listen without moving to a solution?
What part of the comeback story in your building or district hasn't been told yet?
The story isn't complete if the person who did the work isn't in it.
Next week
Week 3, July 7: The First 90 Days, how a new principal sets the tone for everything. Includes the free First 90 Days Planning Template.
About the author
Stephanie Kallis Meek, M.Ed., is a school turnaround consultant, leadership coach, and founder of SKM Educational Services. She has led high-needs schools through real transformation and now works alongside the leaders doing that work.
Book a free consultation: skmeducationalservices.com
Contact: stephanie@skmeducationalservices.com
