With school buildings shuttered and the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold last March, Talisa Dixon was struggling through the lowest point of her career in education. But for the first time, she couldn t talk to the person she always called for help.
Just a week earlier as Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in Ohio the Columbus City Schools superintendent was more than 600 miles away in her hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, saying her final goodbyes as cancer claimed her father s life.
As she made arrangements after his death with her three siblings, Dixon s team of school district leaders was planning for a state-mandated shutdown. It wasn t until she arrived back in Columbus in mid-March and was sitting alone in her Downtown apartment with schools already closed that the gravity of the situation hit her.