In the 12 months since we released the new ISM Evaluation and Growth Cycle model, we’ve been asked to compare this to other approaches that schools currently use. We’re happy to address one particular theme concerning evaluation rubrics.

Looking at the calendar (and observing the cold, gray weather here in the Northeast), we know that we’ve reached the winter doldrums—the time of year when measures of enthusiasm, engagement and morale bottom out in schools (and most other organizations, for that matter). Part of the collateral damage often involves a fraying of working relationships between groups as well as individuals.

If your school has a Facebook presence, but you’d like to see more wall banter, why not have some fun? Facebook isn’t just for posting cat pictures! Give your Facebook fans something to comment on, just for the sake of commenting. After all, engagement it what it’s all about, and it’s a painless way to engage your alumni.

SUCCES. No, it’s not a misspelling. It’s the acronym for what authors Chip and Dan Heath call “sticky messages.” In their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, the Heaths outline six key principles that are the recipe for messages that resonate. Consider how to adapt SUCCES into your marketing message.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed voluntary guidelines to assist K–12 schools in establishing and implementing environmental health programs in accordance with the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007. In carrying out this statutory mandate, EPA, along with its federal partners, developed these guidelines to help states establish the infrastructure needed to support schools in implementing school environmental health programs.

Q: It has recently been suggested that we should stop using employment contracts with staff employees. Do you agree with this advice? And, if we discontinue using contracts, we have to communicate their new salaries to employees in some way. What do you suggest?

Back in 2011, we profiled Millinocket, Maine’s Sterns High School; the school's mission is to recruit up to 60 students from China in an effort to boost numbers and income. The rural school district brought in only six students, hampered by a VISA restriction of one year for international students in public schools, as well as a recruiter in China that did not deliver. And it didn't help that a writer gave a Chinese newspaper a less-than-stellar description of Sterns, the AP reported. Still, Sterns is continuing its program to allow it to grow.

It’s a Small World After All.” Anyone who grew up in the 60s and practically anyone who has visited a Disney resort can probably hear that song, which debuted at the 1965 World’s Fair, in their mind’s ear. It’s a cute, sing-songy way to say what Socrates did more than 2,400 years ago. “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

The mix of temperatures during the winter wears down our immune systems. Indoors, it's nice and toasty; outside it's frightfully cold. Our bodies have to adapt within seconds to drastic changes. For some of us, this equates to mid-winter colds and the flu due to compromised immune systems.

In early January, Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA, had so many people coming into the emergency room with flu symptoms that it set up a mobile ER—actually a large tent—to handle the flow.