Almost daily, media headlines draw attention to students struggling academically and emotionally from interrupted learning, high student absenteeism, declining enrollment, teacher and leader burnout, staffing shortages, polarized communities, and school boards at the center of broader political debates. How did we arrive at this current state of affairs? This study, conducted during the first 14 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, provides some answers to this question. In March 2020, the research team set out to understand how seven California school districts--varying in size, geographic location, urbanicity, and grade span--responded to the unfolding health crisis. As the research progressed, the authors began to explore not only the challenges posed by COVID-19 but also the unfolding national reckoning with issues of racial injustice. Later, as data was analyzed alongside a rapidly changing pandemic and set of conditions in public schools nationwide, the authors realized the