Q: We’re preparing for our upcoming recertification visit and are trying to tidy up our personnel files. What documents should and shouldn’t be in our personnel files?

If lack of familiarity with financial plans or fear of becoming involved are among the reasons you avoid retirement planning, this article will give you some encouragement to help your employees and yourself plan for the future.

ISM recently published a new teacher evaluation model for private-independent schools. In that same vein, today’s lead article summarizes the key elements of teacher evaluation from ISM’s view. In many schools (and most other organizations, as well), performance evaluations are considered a waste of time or a meaningless bureaucratic exercise. What if evaluations could be used to actually increase performance—to help average teachers become excellent, and excellent teachers become even more outstanding? This can be achieved if the right things are being evaluated—and if the evaluation is communicated to the teacher in a way that helps them grow and develop.

In 2011, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 99,947 charges of employment discrimination. In any given year, as many as 25% of schools might experience an employment-related claim against their Directors and Officers/Employment Practices Liability (D&O/EPL) insurance policy. An individual claim might result in judgments of hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released its report America’s Youth: Transitions to Adulthood, which examines numerous aspects of the lives of youth and young adults, ages 14 to 24, in the United States over the last several decades. The report features status and trend data from multiple surveys on the distribution of youth and their family structure; on school-, employment-, and health-related factors; and on future plans.

Not often does anyone get to see an American Bald Eagle nesting in real time. After all, the nest is situated in a tree 80’ in the air. But thanks to sharp, clear cameras and the live streaming service UStream.com, you can watch a nesting pair of Bald Eagles take turns sitting on the eggs, bring food back to the nest, and ultimately, watch the eggs hatch … and the eaglets grow.

ISM believes that the primary responsibility of an academic administrator is to develop the capacity of faculty to deliver the mission with excellence. Here’s the rub: Most academic leaders entered the education field because they love helping children learn, grow, and develop. At a certain point, though, you switched over from teaching to administration, whereby you traded one constituency (children) for another (faculty). In doing so, you are still responsible for helping people learn, grow, and develop—the only difference is, now the people you are directly helping to grow are adults, who in turn help develop the children. These are very different jobs. Both are very important; you just need to be sure that you’re doing the one that you really want to do.

The latest buzz word in the social media world is Pinterest. According to the Pinterest video by L2 Think Tank posted on vimeo.com*, this two-year-old site is the fastest-growing social media site on the Web, with nearly 11 million total visits in the week that ended December 17, 2011, which was nearly 40 times more than six months before. Pinterest’s users are 70% women, 60% college-educated, and generally between the ages of 25-44. These users could be your alumni, your school’s parents, and potential donors.

Your job as Development Director is to connect your donors’ and prospects’ passions to your school’s mission, students, and programs. First, of course, you need to know your donor or prospect, know what will excite them about your school. Then you need to communicate that connection.

The headlines are common, like this one: “Student’s Death Spotlights Food Allegies in School.” Just a couple of months ago, a seven-year-old girl in a Virginia school died when she suffered from a severe allergic reaction to a peanut product. This tragedy brought into question responsibility. According to county school and health officials, the parent must provide the medication. According to the girl’s mother, she provided the school with an “allergy action plan” to administer Benedryl if her daughter had a reaction. She said she tried to provide an EpiPen (epinephrine) to the school but was told to keep it at home.