When Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared a state of emergency on March 10 in response to the coronavirus, the timing was fortunate for Aurora Public Schools (APS). Spring break was starting three days later. To provide a little more breathing room, the district extended its break by one week. In the months that followed, APS's response to COVID-19 would reveal the promise but also some of the limits of a careful approach to crisis management. By defining its spring response as a problem of crisis management, the district was able to provide much-needed resources to its community. But by the summer, APS's equally careful plans for reopening ran into a broader set of issues: the challenges of providing rigorous instruction rather than minimal access to learning activities, ongoing problems with internet access in the community, a lack of state-level safety guidance that hindered planning, and growing tensions over who would decide when and how the district would reopen. These problems underscore how local district responses to the virus--no matter how rational and organized--are increasingly buffeted and complicated by the environment as the pandemic drags on. [For the full report, "Lessons from Remote Learning in Six School Systems," see ED608269.]