Learn practical strategies to handle emerging trends and leadership challenges in private schools.
No matter if you’re a School Head, Admission Director, Development Director, Board member, or any other private school administrator—Ideas & Perspectives, ISM’s premier private school publication, has strategic solutions for the pervasive problems you face.
- Tuition not keeping pace with your expenses? In I&P, explore how to use strategic financial planning to create your budget and appropriately adjust your tuition.
- Enrollment dropping off? Discover how to implement the right admission and enrollment management strategies that engage your community—and fill your classrooms.
- Trouble retaining teachers? Learn how you can best support your teachers using ISM’s Comprehensive Faculty Development framework. Your faculty members will become more enthusiastic about their roles—which ultimately improves student outcomes.
- Fundraising campaigns not as successful as you’d hoped? Implement ISM’s practical advice and guidance to build a thriving annual fund, construct an effective capital campaign, and secure major donors—no matter your community size or location.
- Not sure how to provide professional development—for you and your staff? Learn ways to develop and fund a successful professional development strategy. You can improve teacher-centered satisfaction and growth, which in turn strengthens student-centered learning.
- Problematic schedule? You can master the challenges of scheduling with the help of ISM’s practical advice, based on our experience with hundreds of schools and our time-tested theories.
- And so much more.
I&P has shared targeted research, up-to-date insight, and sound theory with school leaders since 1975. More than 8,500 private school decision-makers find the answers to their schools’ administrative and governance matters in our advisory letter. We give you the strategic answers you need.
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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
Mergers: Creating Excellent and Efficient Leadership Teams
Volume 45 No. 10 // August 10, 2020
Previously in I&P, we discussed the potential benefits of a merger between two or more schools. Should you take this route, as Board Chair and School Head, you will have the ultimate responsibility in selecting the leaders as the schools merge. The School Head The Board of Trustees ...
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The School Head and the Head Support and Evaluation Committee: Centering on a Strategic Pathway
Volume 45 No. 9 // July 27, 2020
For decades, ISM has recommended creating a Head Support and Evaluation Committee (HSEC) to serve as the primary linking unit between governance and operations. The HSEC is a Board committee, and, as such, is charged with monitoring and assisting the Head on the (normally) small proportion of her or his time that is, or should be, devoted to truly “strategic” issues.
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Teacher Review and Evaluation Form
Volume 45 No. 9 // July 27, 2020
Because Essential Expectations are so critical that you must address them immediately, the annual “review” is just a formality and should contain no surprises. This article provides a template that you can use to develop an effective review and evaluation process.
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The Difficult Decision: Closing a Private School
Volume 45 No. 9 // July 27, 2020
Unfortunately, some schools, because of various circumstances, face a combination of weak enrollment, poor fundraising efforts, and budget overruns. Sadly, sometimes the right decision by the Board is to close the school. This article explores the steps required to close a school with integrity. ...
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Using Metric-Based Strategies to Set Your Tuition: How You Emerge From a Recession Depends On It!
Volume 45 No. 8 // June 22, 2020
In the aftermath of a major crisis, fear surrounding enrollment over the next few years can be rampant. Time and research will tell if reality will match schools’ fears. Private schools experienced this level of uncertainty in the aftermath of the Great Recession, which officially occurred betwe...
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Disruption: Effects on Your Strategic Financial Plan
Volume 45 No. 8 // June 22, 2020
For decades, ISM has recommended that Boards of Trustees, with their School Head and Business Manager, undertake strategic financial planning on a quadrennial cycle, unless economic or other exigencies intervene to dictate a shorter cycle. If you, as Board leader or School Head, face the possibility of a precipitous decline in your school’s enrollment demand for any reason—natural disaster, pandemic, economic reversal, or simply your draw-area demographic changing dramatically—consider the following steps in thinking about how to, or whether to, reshape your strategic financial plan.
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Keeping Parent Complaints From Interfering With the Strategic Functions of the Board
Volume 45 No. 8 // June 22, 2020
As Chair of the Committee on Trustees (COT), you will be called on to take the lead in assisting your colleagues in dealing with one of the troublesome facts of private-independent school life: parental complaints made directly to Board members. Many parents think of their school’s Board of Trustees in the same way that they think of their local public school board. And, if that were true, their complaints would not violate that model, i.e., the public elects a public school board to represent their interests.
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Mergers: Scandalous Nonsense or Strategic Alliance?
Volume 45 No. 7 // June 1, 2020
Just say the word “merger” in a room of School Heads and a cacophony of competing beliefs fills the room like some odious vapor. However, there is mounting, research-based evidence to suggest that mergers in the nonprofit sector create more robust, impactful, and efficient mission-driven organizations. ISM’s experience is that nonprofit Boards and Heads have difficulty discussing mergers because the strategy is frequently associated with leadership failure, financial distress, and operational chaos. Add to those fears professional and volunteer leaders’ investment of time, talent, and treasure, and strategic thinking all too often takes a backseat to immoderate organizational goals that never materialize. It has been said that passion blinds. Perhaps it’s time for some private schools to consider the strategic advantages of a merger.
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Becoming a ‘Price-Value’ School: Concepts and Steps
Volume 45 No. 7 // June 1, 2020
When a private-independent school’s demographic changes dramatically, whether suddenly (by natural disaster, pandemic, precipitous deterioration in the national or regional economy, or other), or gradually over a period of years, the school’s leadership may need to examine the school’s marketplace stance and consider a shift. Such a shift might imply, specifically, that leaders of secular “Best-Product” or “Best-Process” schools weigh the pros and cons of shifting to the low-cost model traditionally occupied by many, but not all, Christian, and by some, but not all, Montessori schools. ISM labels this the “Price-Value” market niche.
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Continued Support for the Faculty Is Essential in Times of Disruption
Volume 45 No. 7 // June 1, 2020
When schools face a disruption that results in financial uncertainty, often one of the first expense items cut is faculty professional development. A growth-focused faculty culture is a necessity, not a luxury. Devaluing professional growth could have serious implications for your school’s culture, enrollment, and professional excellence.
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