For many families that are seeking help defraying college costs, a challenging obstacle looms large in their future: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly referred to as the FAFSA.

Parents across the country are moving their children from private to public schools as the effects of the troubled economy are hitting families harder and harder. "We just couldn't keep writing the check," says Cindy Hogan, a San Francisco resident who recently pulled her daughter and son out of a Catholic school. "It was killing us."

H1N1 influenza (or swine flu) is a hot topic right now, and it has a lot of school administrators and staff concerned about the ramifications if it were to begin popping up in their schools or towns. Since ISM is your teammate through both the good times and the bad, we wanted to keep you informed of what exactly swine flu is, and what you can do to protect yourself and your school.

A recent study conducted by eschoolnews.com suggests that a shortage of staffing in IT departments continues to be a serious problem for schools. Said shortages are keeping many schools from realizing technology's full potential as a learning tool, since IT workers are forced to spend the majority of their time reacting to technology problems and not enough time on training teachers and staff on the best ways to integrate technologies into the curriculum.

Of the 50 states in the U.S., 84% fail to provide students with access to a moderately proficient public education system. Only eight states provide both a moderate-proficiency and high-access education for all students. Compared to their white, non-Latino peers, minority and low-income students have only half the opportunity to learn in public schools.

You know all about "break points" and how dangerous they can be. When their children are about to make the transition from one division to the next, that's when parents tend to seriously re-examine their commitment to a private school education.

The definition of "golden years" has been revised. If 30 is the new 20, then 75 is the new 65. And the growing trend in older retirement ages proves this all too well. A new study, The New Retirement Survey, builds on the conventional wisdom that many baby boomers are not interested in a traditional retirement of leisure. People are living longer, and perhaps in response, they're working past the typical retirement age of 65. In fact, this study shows that most boomers who do retire at 64-65 launch into an entirely new job or career.

The Latino students in your school have stories to tell. A new initiative from StoryCorps, the nonprofit oral history project, provides an opportunity for them to share their own and their families' experiences as a means of preserving and celebrating the diversity of their culture.

This one's especially for those of you in the upper division. Let's say that you don't get enough drama around college applications and acceptances in your day-to-day working life. Someone out there in TV world has your back.

As you know, Obama's new administration has been busy on many legislative fronts since taking office, some of which have directly impacted employers. Here are a few quick updates.