As December 31 and the deadline for charitable deductions for the 2011 tax year approaches, will your school be available to accept these last-minute donations?

It’s that time of year again. You know what we’re about to say—the holiday gifting season. For millions of children that means only one thing—new toys! And perhaps it even means a few new gizmos for your classrooms.

With any new year comes resolutions. One that is recommended for 2012 is to review your school’s group Long Term Disability insurance plan.

British chef and natural foods activist Jamie Oliver, in his crusade against fatty, processed foods in schools, is having a hard time getting his food in a few school districts. According to a report in the New York Times, investigative reporter Lucy Komisar contends that children’s school meals are being driven away from anything healthier by the food supply and processing companies in the name of profit.

This month, we surfed the Web to give you a short list of cool resources on a variety of useful—and hot—topics. Here are a few things we found.

For some time now, ISM has been writing and speaking about the need for the “department chair” role to change from an “honorary” or “figurehead” role to that of an active manager, coach, and mentor. (For lower schools, this includes “coordinators” or similarly named quasi-administrator roles). This perspective will take on more relevance as we introduce our new evaluation and growth cycle model in the coming months. If you agree with this assertion, the question becomes, “Are your current department chairs well-equipped for taking on new “management” duties?

One way to manage risk is to transfer the risk to someone else. The most common form of this approach is the purchase of insurance. For a fee (premium) you transfer the responsibility to pay for a loss (less any deductible), to an insurance company.

Q: We see that you keep writing about “Characteristics of Professional Excellence.” What would we use this for? Is it just another meaningless list that we’ll put a lot of time and effort into and then put it on a shelf to collect dust?

Blogs, forums, chat rooms, listservs—the list goes on and on. These are valuable resources to find alternative opinions and information about almost anything. From HR concerns to just needing a quick laugh to fuel the rest of your day, blogs can help remind you you're not alone in the all to often chaotic world of private-independent education.

Cyberbaiting is a real problem. According to the Norton Online Family Report—which tracks online habits of youth—one in five teachers has experienced cyberbaiting.