By accepting the role of Chair of your Board’s Committee on Trustees (COT), you have accepted leadership of a committee that ISM regards as one of the Board’s most critical for the strategic success of the school you serve: that is, success as a viable and sustainable institution for the long term. Aside from your everyday, year-round task of providing as-needed assistance to the Board President—partnering with her or him to insure the smooth, strategically focused operations of the Board—you will find there is a predictable cycle of tasks the COT can expect to undertake in most years. (“Most years” refers to the fact that Boards occasionally face tasks of such magnitude that a standard Board calendar cannot realistically be followed, such as a year in which the search for a new School Head is conducted.)