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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/17\/magazine\/joplin-schools-superintendent-disaster-rebuild.html?emc=edit_nn_20260918&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226681",
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Huff, former superintendent of the Joplin, Mo., schools.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection NavigationAccountAccountGoHome U.S.SECTIONSU.S.PoliticsNew YorkCaliforniaEducationHealthObituariesScienceClimateWeatherSportsBusinessTechThe UpshotThe MagazineTOP STORIESDonald TrumpSupreme CourtCongressImmigrationAbortionLatest PollsNEWSLETTERSThe MorningMake sense of the day\u2019s news and ideas.The EveningCatch up on big news, and wind down to end your day.See all newslettersPODCASTSThe DailyThe biggest stories of our time, in 20 minutes a day.See all podcastsWorldSECTIONSWorldAfricaAmericasAsiaAustraliaCanadaEuropeMiddle EastScienceClimateWeatherHealthObituariesTOP STORIESMiddle East CrisisRussia-Ukraine WarChina International RelationsThe Global ProfileLeer en Espa\u00f1olNEWSLETTERSThe WorldA guide to understanding the news, made for readers around the globe.Your Places: Global UpdateThe latest news for any part of the world you select.Canada LetterBackstories and analysis from our Canadian correspondents.See all newslettersBusinessSECTIONSBusinessTechEconomyMediaFinance and MarketsDealBookPersonal TechEnergy TransitionYour MoneyTOP STORIESU.S. EconomyStock MarketArtificial IntelligenceNEWSLETTERSDealBookThe most crucial business and policy news you need to know.On TechOur best tech reporting from the week.See all newslettersPODCASTSHard ForkOur tech journalists help you make sense of the rapidly changing tech world.See all podcastsArtsSECTIONSToday's ArtsBook ReviewBest SellersDanceMoviesMusicTelevisionTheaterPop CultureT MagazineVisual ArtsRECOMMENDATIONS100 Best Movies of the 21st CenturyCritic\u2019s PicksWhat to ReadWhat to WatchWhat to Listen To5 Minutes to Make You Love MusicNEWSLETTERSBooksReviews, news and features to help you find your next read.WatchingStreaming TV and movie recommendations.See all newslettersPODCASTSBook ReviewThe podcast that takes you inside the literary world.PopcastPop music news, new songs and albums, and artists of note.See all podcastsLifestyleSECTIONSAll LifestyleWellTravelStyleReal EstateFoodLoveYour MoneyPersonal TechT MagazineCOLUMNS36 HoursAsk WellThe HuntModern LoveWhere to EatVowsSocial Q\u2019sThe EthicistAsk the TherapistNEWSLETTERSThe WeekenderUnwind with stories about culture and the way we live.WellEssential news and guidance to live your healthiest life.See all newslettersPODCASTSModern LoveThe complicated love lives of real people.See all podcastsOpinionSECTIONSOpinionGuest EssaysEditorialsOp-DocsVideosLettersTOPICSPoliticsWorldBusinessTechClimateHealthCultureCOLUMNISTSJamelle BouieMaureen DowdDavid FrenchThomas L. 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Then Came the Backlash.A former superintendent in Joplin, Mo., is trying to apply what he learned to other shattered districts \u2014 and reckoning with the toll of the disaster on his own life.C.J. Huff, former superintendent of the Joplin, Mo., schools.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen \u00b7 34:56 min Share full articleBy Eve FairbanksSept. 17, 2026The weather on May 22, 2011, was bright and cloudless in Joplin, Mo., ideal for a high school graduation. C.J. Huff, the superintendent of schools, had gotten to his office at 5:30 in the morning to put the finishing touches on his speech. That afternoon, the ceremony proceeded on a disciplined schedule, the way Huff liked it. He recalls walking out into the sunlight afterward, feeling relieved that graduation had gone smoothly.In the parking lot, he heard a storm siren wailing. As he drove home, a meteorologist on the radio mentioned severe weather. But the sun was still above him. When he turned into his subdivision, though, he noticed something out of the ordinary, even physics-defying: A tree in the right of his field of view snapped in half, and the top part lifted away from the lower trunk and began to float in the air, like a leaf. He suddenly realized that a violent wind was rocking his car from the left. Just as he did, he felt the wind shift in the opposite direction. His windshield filled with grass and dirt.A tornado was entering Joplin, a city of 50,000 people. Most of us imagine tornadoes as ominous but narrow funnels. This is not what the most dangerous ones look like. The Joplin tornado was a rain-wrapped wedge that expanded to a mile wide, making it hard to identify until it was nearly on you.One resident, Callum Eldred, who had then just finished 10th grade, described it as the blackest thing he had ever seen \u2014 like a wall looming over his city, with what looked like \u201ctwigs coming out of the top of it.\u201d The \u201ctwigs\u201d were things like telephone poles, trees and bits of houses. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019re looking at because you\u2019ve never seen it before,\u201d Eldred, now 32, told me recently, \u201clike in a movie, when the Indians first see ships.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe tornado touched down just southwest of Joplin, gathered steam, then carved a six-mile line straight through the city, its winds cresting above 200 miles an hour. It obliterated a hospital, crumpling steel beams like paper. It gobbled up nursing homes, churches, 500 businesses and nearly 7,500 houses, more than a third of the city\u2019s housing stock. And it ultimately killed 161 people, making it the deadliest tornado in America in over half a century.The intensity of a 200-mile-an-hour wind is not double what you would encounter if you stuck your head out the window of a vehicle traveling 100 miles per hour. When speed doubles, the force of wind quadruples, so that kind of tornado is not something humans or infrastructure experience in any other circumstance; nothing can really be built to withstand it.At a bank, only the steel-and-concrete safe deposit vault was left upright. The rest of the building was blown clean away. Cars, manhole covers, even the hospital\u2019s medevac helicopter turned to missiles; chairs embedded themselves in walls. The tornado scoured into the earth, tearing up asphalt. It dragged people out of their homes and ripped off their clothes, even their skin. About 30 minutes after it set down, it lifted. Thirty minutes after that, the sky was blue again.Huff\u2019s immediate instinct, once the storm passed, was to drive into town and take stock of the school buildings. Joplin High School\u2019s principal, Kerry Sachetta, had that impulse, too. \u201cThe gym was exploded,\u201d Sachetta recalled. \u201cThe performing arts center was exploded.\u201d On the sports field, \u201cit looked like God and the angels shot down splintered two-by-fours, like you see arrows coming down in movies set in medieval times.\u201d Trees were sawed off. Tangled power lines were sparking all over. \u201cIt was like Armageddon,\u201d Sachetta said. The sharp pine scent of cracked timber filled the air, along with the smell of natural gas.ImageThe damaged Joplin High School on May 24, 2011, two days after the tornado.Credit...Charlie Riedel\/Associated PressThe tornado had destroyed six schools in Joplin: the regular and technical high schools, two middle schools and two elementary schools, facilities that taught more than half the district\u2019s 7,911 students. Three more elementary schools and an administrative building had obvious damage. The storm also killed seven Joplin students, including one who was handed a diploma by Huff hours beforehand. More than 100 students had been injured. Many had lost family members or homes.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTA week later, Huff held a news conference in front of the ruins of the high school. School, he declared, would start on time in August. The idea had stunned Joplin\u2019s school board, but it gave him temporary emergency powers to make decisions without its input. He salvaged a countdown clock from the practice field and set it to 87 days. Reopening on time would prove that the city still had a future.Huff ultimately led a remarkable turnaround. The district barely lost enrollment, and over the next few years, it actually improved educational outcomes. Huff\u2019s part in this set him on a new career path, designed to fill a void in federal support for school administrators: In 2017, he was hired to help the Department of Health and Human Services with its disaster-relief efforts, advising school leaders on how to rebuild their districts after devastating storms, wildfires and floods.This work has become increasingly urgent in our disaster-plagued age. Though there is inconclusive scientific evidence that climate change causes or worsens tornadoes like the one that hit Joplin, the warming planet has led to more intense hurricanes, longer wildfire seasons and other severe weather phenomena across the globe. Forthcoming research from Brown University estimates that 25 percent of all American public schools are now in areas with \u201cvery high risk\u201d of at least one kind of climate-related disaster. In the aftermath of these crises, superintendents trained in the minutiae of curriculum implementation are suddenly thrust into an entirely new role. This is where Huff comes in: His job is to deploy to other ruined districts and try to export the lessons he learned restoring Joplin\u2019s schools.ImageStudents at the rebuilt Joplin High School in September.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe idea that schools should be central to a region\u2019s post-disaster recovery emerged three decades ago after a brutal hurricane. Schooling had long been considered a priority below shelter. School buildings, with their vast gyms and industrial kitchens, were often converted into refuges for the displaced. Then, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew ravaged Florida, and leaders in the hardest-hit county, Dade, decided to find focus amid the chaos by throwing themselves at reopening schools as fast as they could. \u201cWe were the ones that brought this community back together by opening up the schools,\u201d the Dade County superintendent, Octavio J. Visiedo, later told education researchers \u2014 thus undergirding the reboot of a whole society.Sign Up for The Great Read On weekdays and Sundays, we recommend one piece of exceptional writing from The Times \u2014 a narrative or essay that takes you someplace you might not expect to go. Get it sent to your inbox.If you got children back into school, it freed up parents to return to work. It reassured families that a community would remain viable, making them less likely to move elsewhere. And restoring routine for children could safeguard the psychological health of a future generation. Other officials began to follow suit, racing to reopen schools in Grand Forks, N.D., after a major 1997 flood and across Florida during a ruinous 2004 hurricane season.In 2005, Hurricane Katrina underscored this principle and expanded it. The extended tail of misery it wrought on New Orleans put a spotlight on the longer-term suffering that disasters inflicted, particularly on children. In 2010, nine months before Joplin\u2019s tornado, the social and behavioral scientist David Abramson released an influential study called \u201cChildren as Bellwethers of Recovery.\u201d Citing post-Katrina data, Abramson argued that young people\u2019s mental health reflects the performance of all the systems around them \u2014 government, civic institutions, health care, schools. When children regain stability, that is evidence that a community is functioning again; if they don\u2019t, that\u2019s a \u201clagging indicator.\u201d That means leaders should \u201cprioritize kids\u201d after natural disasters, Abramson told me recently; their flourishing can help the adults along.In the years since, this has played out so often that it has become a national rite of passage: A school district is crushed by a storm or a wildfire, and overnight, a superintendent becomes a short-term crisis-response coordinator, first charged with overseeing wrecked infrastructure and traumatized children and then presiding over a district\u2019s resurrection. Indeed, superintendents can end up determining whether an entire community rebounds or withers.Even as more and more superintendents find themselves in this position, the help and training for educators has not kept up. In the United States, there is no centralized guidance for school administrators. For example, FEMA\u2019s recovery framework involves encouraging communities to ask themselves questions in the vein of: Is your old transportation network actually the one you want to rebuild? What\u2019s your big vision for the next 20 years? How can federal money help get you there? There has been no explicit federal guidance, meanwhile, for questions like: How quickly should children return to school? How should we rebuild damaged school buildings? This was true in 2011, when the tornado hit Joplin. It\u2019s still largely true 15 years later.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTKatrina also crystallized an emerging belief that the devastation wrought by extreme weather might present a chance to correct broader social problems. In 2006 testimony before Congress, Robin Jarvis, an acting school superintendent in New Orleans, called Katrina a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime opportunity\u201d to redesign a public school system that had already been teetering on the edge of insolvency and make it \u201cworld class.\u201d State officials redesigned New Orleans\u2019s public education system around charter schools.Back in 2011, Huff was new to all of this thinking; he had received no training on post-disaster school operations. He felt, he said, as if he was \u201cflying blind.\u201d But he would come to seem, to many, like the ideal implementer of the principles that Abramson and other researchers had laid out.On a late-June day, I drove with Huff from where he now lives in Springfield, Mo., to Joplin, to look at the path the tornado took and what had been created in its place. The foothills of the lush Ozarks emptied into dusty plains dotted with water towers. The region is patchworked with farms, but it has never had very good soil. Originally a hardscrabble frontier, Joplin became a boomtown at the turn of the 20th century after the discovery of lead and zinc. Its school football teams dominated state competitions.Within a few decades, the best ore had been used up. The region started running on fumes. Today neglected cemeteries are bellied up to the Interstate. Slightly desperate signs beckon cross-country tourists, promoting attractions like a museum dedicated to an electric shovel or the Uranus Fudge Factory: \u201cThe Best Fudge Comes From Uranus!\u201d When we got into Joplin, though, it looked much fresher \u2014 both appealing and a little eerie. The town center devastated by the tornado has front yards so treeless and identical houses so immaculately painted that it resembles the video game Animal Crossing.ImageJoplin High School\u2019s tennis courts, part of its ambitious post-tornado reinvention.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhen Huff decided that Joplin\u2019s schools would reopen on time, other educators were reeling. \u201cWe looked for our kids for a whole week,\u201d Sachetta, the former high school principal, who is now Joplin\u2019s superintendent, recalled. \u201cIf a kid was on Facebook and they were posting, we marked them off the list. We used every method possible. Call their parents, call a friend. \u2018Have you seen Joe? Are you sure?\u2019\u201d Then there was the question of how to hold summer school, replace torn-up textbooks and prevent students from going to the ruined school buildings.The students were drawn there. When Randy Steele, then a school board member, drove by the high school at night, he would see lights faintly bobbing in the dark: flashlights wielded by teenagers who might be sneaking back to look for their cheerleading uniforms or just wander the wreckage. The site was more dangerous than they knew. In the first few days after the tornado, Steele and some district employees dug through what was left of the buildings, trying to salvage sheet music, instruments, desks, anything that still looked usable. But Huff heard from his facilities director, as he put it, \u201cAsbestos is probably everywhere.\u201dTests confirmed it was. \u201cIt\u2019s not like the government or FEMA had a SEAL-team-type, education-focused, insertion team saying, \u2018Here\u2019s what to expect,\u2019\u201d he said. Instead of concrete advice, he mostly received warnings, the most dire from a FEMA official who said to expect the loss of at least a third of Joplin\u2019s school-going population as families were displaced. A Department of Education administrator said there could be up to 150 student suicides. \u201cIt scared the heck out of me,\u201d Huff said.He worked to set up temporary facilities all around town: The wrestling team met in a fireworks store, emptied after the Fourth of July. The heavily damaged East Middle School was relocated to an industrial building on the far edge of Joplin, with no windows and a gravel floor. It was next to a dog-food plant, \u201cand when the wind was out of the right direction, it just did not smell good,\u201d Huff remembered. For the temporary high school, he negotiated to use a shuttered big-box store inside a shopping mall.In 2011, Huff, at 41, was sandy-haired and baby-faced; he peppered his speech with \u201cawesome!\u201d As his national profile rose, he made a useful mascot for a city bent on an inspiring turnaround. His rousing TV interviews led to more coverage, more donations. Barry Manilow donated more than $300,000 worth of instruments to Joplin\u2019s school music programs. The United Arab Emirates gave a million dollars to buy a laptop for every child, to replace the ruined textbooks. Huff hired nine new trauma counselors, who set up \u201cweather school,\u201d in which meteorologists gave presentations to assuage students\u2019 anxieties.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTImageFront row, from left: Mayor Mike Woolston of Joplin, Barry Manilow, C.J. Huff and Rick Castor, Joplin High School\u2019s band director, in Joplin on Oct. 27, 2011. Manilow made a large donation to the town\u2019s school music programs.Credit...Jason Squires\/Getty ImagesWhen it came to the longer-term rebuild, Huff perceived a rare opportunity. With an influx of federal money and an infrastructural blank slate, he could change Joplin\u2019s education system significantly. \u201cWe will rebuild better than before,\u201d he promised the community in an open letter.Joplin\u2019s schools had been struggling already. About 65 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch; when Huff became superintendent three years earlier, the district had among the lowest high-school graduation rates in Missouri. The dropout rate had been aggravated by a class divide. Some children who lived in the wealthier pockets referred to working-class children as \u201cthe dirties,\u201d Huff told me. So he wondered: Why not remake the schools in a way that might even out educational outcomes?He dispatched more than 50 Joplin administrators and teachers to fly around the nation to visit institutions whose design and philosophies might be an inspiration, from vanguard charter schools to Apple\u2019s campus in Cupertino, Calif. The idea of making public high schools \u201ccareer academies\u201d was sweeping education-policy circles, and, Huff said, \u201cwe wanted to have new 21st-century learning spaces. Just real, real new and fresh.\u201dJoplin High would be his most ambitious project. It had already needed expansion, and now he envisioned rolling the high school and technical college into one, offering a group of simulated workplaces like a restaurant kitchen and a nurse\u2019s bay to train in. Ninth graders could enter one of five \u201cfreshman academies\u201d focused on the arts, business, health, service and technology. Instead of long, \u201cdouble-barreled\u201d hallways lined with classrooms, the interior of the new school would feel like a miniature town, with dispersed cafes and little plazas. Storm shelters would be built into the design, with multipurpose rooms that could be used as gyms and performance spaces.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAt first, the whole town came together. Residents stayed up all night to clear one another\u2019s debris. FEMA employees \u201ckept comparing us positively to New Orleans,\u201d Tracy Clements, a former school counselor, told me \u2014 a fact that made Joplinites feel proud. The tornado had ripped the letters J, L, I and N off the JOPLIN HIGH SCHOOL sign, leaving O and P. One night, somebody added an H and an E in duct tape, so the sign spelled HOPE. Huff kept a roll of duct tape in his car, to repair the letters if they peeled off.ImageThe first day of school at the temporary high school for juniors and seniors at Northpark Mall in Joplin on Aug. 17, 2011.Credit...Steve Hebert for The New York TimesOver the course of that first year, school enrollment dropped only 6.5 percent, and the district did not lose a single student to suicide. Huff traveled the country telling the story of Joplin\u2019s reborn schools. People magazine made him one of its six 2011 \u201cHeroes Among Us\u201d; in 2013, Missouri named Huff its superintendent of the year.But as Huff\u2019s fame grew, backlash was brewing in Joplin. In the chaotic months after the tornado, residents had been excited about a major upgrade to the city. Now harder-to-fix frustrations were mounting: the slow rebuilding, the long toll of injuries. Grief fed a desire to put back what was lost, just as it had been. Callum Eldred, the former student, told me that it was initially \u201ccool\u201d to go to high school at a shopping mall \u2014 but over time, he started to feel like a guinea pig in somebody else\u2019s experiment.Some residents began to object to an underlying idea that Huff\u2019s rebuilding plan seemed to convey: that the old Joplin, whose residents bravely survived disaster, was actually a backward, failing place. Tina Carl, Eldred\u2019s mother, told me that in her view, the recovery started to \u201clook like a class separation.\u201d She thought Huff was capitalizing on the destruction to make Joplin and its schools more \u201cbougie.\u201d \u201cI felt like, I don\u2019t think they\u2019re thinking the way poor folks are thinking,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking like rich people.\u201dThe complaints were not baseless. The temporary and new buildings were funded through insurance, government grants and donations, but Huff also had to ask Joplin residents to approve a $62 million local bond and was forced to borrow money while awaiting FEMA reimbursements. After a Missouri state audit criticized the district\u2019s dwindling reserves and procedural opacity, residents began confronting him in supermarkets, accusing him of stealing Joplin\u2019s money. Frustrated and hurt, Huff fought back in public, clashing with new school-board members. His office started a blog called \u201cReal or Rumor\u201d: \u201cI am happy to report that there is NO $150,000 elephant tusk Italian chandelier in the new high school,\u201d one post read. To his critics, the jaunty tone seemed condescending. An online petition demanded his removal; hundreds of signers called him \u201carrogant,\u201d a \u201ccrook\u201d and a \u201cbully.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHuff stopped sleeping. He gained 40 pounds. On drives, he found himself wondering what would happen if he flicked his wrist and sent his car into a tree. \u201cMost days, my state of mind was that I wasn\u2019t afraid of dying,\u201d he told me. \u201cIn fact, I welcomed it.\u201d Three weeks before Joplin won a 2015 award as a \u201cfuture-ready school district\u201d from the Department of Education, Huff resigned. \u201cI was destroyed physically, mentally, spiritually,\u201d he said.One afternoon in Joplin, Huff and I stopped for lunch at a cafe. Huff is now 56, with salt-and-pepper hair and a more subdued vibe than he had a decade ago. As we ordered, a man Huff thought he knew walked past our table. Huff said hello, and for a second, the passerby didn\u2019t recognize him.\u201cC.J.,\u201d Huff prompted.\u201cAh,\u201d the man said. \u201cThe infamous C.J. Huff.\u201dImageCallum Eldred and his mother, Tina Carl, inside Northpark Mall, which served as part of the temporary makeshift high school.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesAfter two years piecing together educational consulting work, Huff got a call: The Department of Health and Human Services was looking for someone to lead education-related disaster relief. It was 2017, and his basic brief was to do \u201clandscape assessments\u201d of shattered school districts: to figure out exactly what educators needed in order to reopen their schools. When he accepted the job, Hurricane Harvey had just made landfall, and he was deployed to Texas.There, he was given a cubicle in a response hub that FEMA and state officials had set up in a golf-club-manufacturing plant. It held 1,200 disaster experts from dozens of federal, state and local agencies \u2014 \u201chuge teams of people,\u201d he told me, \u201cto support health care, for instance.\u201d But Huff was among only a handful of people assigned to support educators. Vast areas of the state\u2019s coast had been underwater, and Huff realized how complicated and wide-ranging flood damage was compared with the more circumscribed havoc wreaked by a tornado.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe scale of flood damage set limits on how fast schools could reopen: In the worst-hit places like Port Aransas, a city on an island off the coast of Corpus Christi, even temporary buildings could not open their doors for nearly two months. But speaking to Sharon McKinney, the district superintendent, Huff felt overwhelmed by a sense of recognition. The grief, the exhaustion he saw in her: \u201cI remembered that look on my face.\u201dDozens of federal and state officials had visited McKinney and left her their business cards. She had become responsible overnight for building design and decoding government regulations, things she had little training for. But no one took the time to walk her through what she should actually do, she told me. She and Huff sat together in her office and talked.Traveling to other districts, Huff learned that resource-poor parts of America struggled to implement even some of the most basic principles of school recovery. In Puerto Rico, school buildings were used as shelters months after Hurricane Maria hit; when Huff arrived eight months later, some were still missing roofs. When he got to Florida after 2018\u2019s Hurricane Michael \u2014 which came on the back of a particularly destructive 2017 hurricane season \u2014 he realized that the local, state and FEMA leadership bench was \u201conly staffed so deep,\u201d especially when \u201clarge-scale disasters happen back to back like that.\u201dHe has now been doing this work for nearly a decade, but new disaster zones still jolt him. Huff recalled looking out the window of his Uber from the Maui airport into Lahaina, Hawaii, a month after the 2023 fire, thinking about how the stripped toothpick trees reminded him of Joplin. The general emptiness of the landscape, though, was a shock; fire doesn\u2019t produce debris in the way storms do. All four school campuses remained unusable, and many students had enrolled elsewhere. The blaze had done a different kind of damage, melting car batteries and timber treated with arsenic to resist termites. Even intact buildings were coated in toxic ash.All these years after the tornado, he is struck by how little has changed procedurally. There are still no clear federal guidelines for restoring schools after a disaster. In my own conversations with superintendents whose districts were devastated by hurricanes, floods and wildfires over the past decade, I heard about how they felt left alone to manage crises that had damaged their own homes, put them at the front line of comprehensively caring for thousands of their most vulnerable neighbors \u2014 the children \u2014 and rendered them responsible for decisions that would determine whether their communities\u2019 tax bases survived, whether their towns lived or died.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTJosh Barnes, who ran the broader division within the Department of Health and Human Services that contracted Huff, left H.H.S. in 2019. But he told me that he still sees an acute need for better organized federal help. School leaders, Barnes said, are not \u201cadequately able to benefit from the collective experience that we have as a country.\u201d In his view, every time a new district becomes a disaster zone, \u201cwe are discovering the same lessons for the first time, for, like, 20th time. And it\u2019s agonizing to watch, frankly.\u201dFrom left: The remains of Paradise Elementary School in November 2018, following California's Camp Fire. A classroom at Springfield Elementary School in January 2019, damaged when Hurricane Michael hit Panama City, Fla. The Kamehameha III School on Maui, damaged by the Lahaina fire in August 2023. Huff deployed to all three districts to help with recovery.Credit...Josh Edelson\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images; David Goldman\/Associated Press; Go Nakamura for The New York TimesAs Huff visited other school districts, he discovered another common thread: The backlash he experienced was not specific to Joplin. Devastated communities often fell into infighting following disasters. After a catastrophe defined by helplessness, finding a shared enemy gave people something they could control.In Maui, for example, Huff was surprised by the intensity of the community\u2019s anger, even the children\u2019s. At one meeting of fifth graders he convened, a child was incensed that leaders hadn\u2019t sounded a warning siren. Huff was also struck by the residents\u2019 desire to retain the island\u2019s \u201cidentity,\u201d to put things back the way they were \u2014 what he called the \u201c\u2018heart piece\u2019 of recovery.\u201d Lahaina\u2019s jade-green elementary school had stood in the same spot since before Hawaii joined America. That location was in the island\u2019s tsunami zone. Contemplating the site, Huff knew it was impractical to rebuild there. But some Lahainans fought to preserve the site nonetheless.Seeing all of this helped Huff process his own experience. \u201cJoplin\u2019s cycle of recovery is very, very real,\u201d he told me. Jarvis, the acting New Orleans superintendent, resigned less than two years after Katrina. After flooding in 2016 in Nicholas County, W.Va., local officials proposed to use the recovery money for an ambitious school-consolidation plan. Residents mutinied, and the debate over how to rebuild and how much to spend dragged on for years, eventually leading to resignations.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhen superintendents didn\u2019t face resentment, it was often because the whole community \u2014 local leaders and residents alike \u2014 had assigned blame to federal officials. When everyone felt abandoned by the same institutions, that failure could be strangely protective. In Port Aransas after Harvey, the demon was outside: Frustration was directed outward, at contractors and FEMA. \u201cWe were all in the same boat,\u201d McKinney told me. For years she kept an email she had printed out on her desk, a FEMA reimbursement denial for hardware, to remind her of what victimized her town. (FEMA did not reply to a request for comment.)One night in Texas, Googling disaster recovery theory in his hotel room, Huff came across a graphic. It depicted a line tracking people\u2019s psychological response after a disaster: The line soared upward as survivors experience a \u201cheroic\u201d surge of optimism, the \u201choneymoon phase.\u201d Then the line plummeted into the \u201cdisillusionment phase,\u201d in which fatigue, blame and rage send a community far lower emotionally than it was before the catastrophe. Only long afterward would the real \u201crecovery and reconstruction\u201d begin.When Huff first saw it, he thought: \u201cOh, my gosh, this is exactly what I went through. This is normal.\u201d He sent it to other leaders from the time of the tornado, several of whom mentioned or showed it to me, too. It became cherished, like a talisman. When Huff described this graphic to me recently, he began to cry.ImageHuff in the cafeteria at Joplin High School.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesThe central tension in disaster recovery \u2014 between rebuilding what was lost and creating something new \u2014 will always be hard for communities to reconcile. And complicating the research around school recovery is how time can change the picture. Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, the remaking of New Orleans\u2019s school system is seen as a contentious case study: It prompted real and comprehensive academic gains, yet it also deepened some inequities in the schools. In Joplin, certain educational metrics, especially graduation rates, improved after the tornado; though those rates fluctuated over the longer term, they have shot up recently.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTBut several former Joplin students told me that their feelings about Huff\u2019s rebuilding plan had evolved as they got further out from their high school years. Mariah Vazquez, whose home was destroyed in the tornado, entered the new Joplin High when it opened in 2014 and told me that she initially felt lost in the \u201cextravagant\u201d building. But, she said, \u201cI would not be where I am today\u201d \u2014 a professional photographer \u2014 without the career academy project. For a long time, Eldred, who stayed in the Joplin area and works at McDonald\u2019s, felt as if he were still \u201cliving in the shadow of the tornado.\u201d But now, he said, he can appreciate the citywide recovery that Huff\u2019s flashy school renovation plan helped jump-start. He mentioned the modern library, the cutting-edge hospital, \u201cthings we probably wouldn\u2019t have gotten if we stuck to the old-style Joplin.\u201dToday Huff works out of a co-working space in a former chicken-processing plant in downtown Springfield. When the plant was converted, the developers got rid of the equipment but didn\u2019t change the architecture, so the floors slant in odd ways, a relic from when the builders wanted the blood of slaughtered chickens to run into easy-to-clean pools.After the pandemic began to discourage in-person deployments, his government work became too intermittent. So he and his wife founded their own company in 2024 as \u201ca turnkey solution\u201d for shattered superintendents awash in problems after disasters, he said. \u201cFEMA technical assistance. Grant writing. Grant management. Anything and everything that school leaders have to deal with.\u201d When we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, he was about to travel to central Pennsylvania to meet with a superintendent whose school was hit by a tornado in August.In theory, Huff is better positioned than anyone to do this kind of work. \u201cIt\u2019s mystifying,\u201d said Abramson, the social and behavioral scientist, that public officials don\u2019t do more to \u201chelp affected communities quickly climb the learning curve\u201d by imitating Joplin\u2019s fast, ambitious school reopening plan. But over time, Huff himself has begun to think that his logistical advice goes only so far. After all, every school district is facing its own specific, regional obstacles. Now he tries to offer something more like solidarity. For two superintendents I spoke with who worked with Huff, that empathy was just as crucial as any recovery template.Huff told me that in retrospect, he thinks all the TV interviews he did about Joplin, the crusading, visionary attitude, might have been a way to distract himself from feeling or processing his own grief. \u201cMaybe part of the reason I kept the hero cape on was so I didn\u2019t have to face those memories,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was easier for me to just focus in on the work.\u201dNow he tells educators: \u201c\u2018I\u2019m not your knight in shining armor. I\u2019m here to be your backup.\u2019 I try to be a Swiss Army knife.\u201d He encourages school leaders to spend more time listening than talking and to \u201ctake the hero cape off.\u201d \u201cI always kind of frame it as, \u2018Do as I say, not as I did,\u2019\u201d he said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOne day in Joplin, Huff took me to the high school he once reimagined. For 20 minutes, we wandered all around the school\u2019s imposing facade, from the triple-height entryway doors to the outdoor amphitheater, searching for a way in. Pressing his face against the tinted windows to try to spot someone within, Huff looked like a child locked out of his family home. Finally he spied a custodian and pounded the glass until she opened a door.ImageThe auto-body-work training area at Joplin High School.Credit...Eli Durst for The New York TimesInside, the windows filled the high-ceilinged space with a beautiful, gentle light, bringing the outdoors in. We visited the restaurant, the state-of-the-art black-box theater, the auto-body-work training area, the \u201cthink tanks\u201d \u2014 small, soundproof rooms \u2014 that supported the development of clubs and organizations, \u201cjust to make sure kids felt like they\u2019re part of something.\u201dAs we wandered the school, Huff began speaking in the present tense. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a great culinary arts program here,\u201d he said, showing me a full restaurant where students can serve guests. \u201cKids have a lot of chances to just explore their passions.\u201d We paused in the hall, where alcoves displayed striking wood sculptures that artists had carved out of tree trunks torn up by the tornado. He touched a wall. \u201cI\u2019m wandering around here, and I\u2019m like, \u2018That spot needs painting.\u2019\u201d Finally, we had seen everything we could. Huff pushed an emergency-exit door and walked out into the sun. It was easier to leave than to get in. In two months, the school would be full of students again, and he would be on to the next place.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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