Successful Boards of Trustees govern from an intentional strategic perspective—i.e., focused consistently on multiyear financial viability and long-term organizational excellence. But many of those same Boards neglect to update their bylaws, which often remain relics from a distant bureaucratic past. The following article provides discussion and examples of the kinds of updates and modifications that you, as Board President or Chair of the Committee on Trustees, might consider. This discussion and its examples are illustrative only. Involve your school’s attorney before adopting any bylaw changes.

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If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur. – Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961) This quotation from a counseling and personal growth “classic” book by one of the past century’s most influential psychologists states that “a certain type of relationship” will itself be seen as a “usable” context for positive change by the recipient of the help. ISM has emphasized the importance of mentor and coaching roles—especially in the teacher-to-student and administrator-to-teacher relationships—and has grounded its counsel in ISM research regarding “predictability and support” and on the work of others. This article describes and recommends a newly focused perspective on and conceptualization of an important professional role in many private-independent schools: the teacher as advisor to students. ISM has emphasized the importance of a mission-basis for advisory programs and, the strategic importance of faculty professional development. This article offers guidance in support of both.

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In 2008, the National Youth Leadership Council articulated “The K–12 Learning Standards for Quality Service Learning Practice.” ISM both endorses and replicates them here, recognizing that such standards have to meet and be influenced by your school’s mission. Service learning is now a norm in upper, middle, and lower schools. Most Division Directors believe, as a result of each school’s and division’s mission statements, that service learning is a key part of children’s education. Scheduling the program, however, can be challenging. It competes for time with the school’s primary task of providing an academic education, asks teachers to carry out yet another function, and can be disruptive as students miss class or use class for tangential projects. Clearly, the school has to articulate its position on service learning and agree to standards that may mirror those of the National Youth Leadership Council.

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As Board President, if you have not experienced the frustration of leaks of information about sensitive matters, your situation is rare. Probably, you are already familiar with the sinking feeling of discovering that a delicate Board discussion has become general knowledge among either students or parents, perhaps within 24 hours.

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ISM has written at length on the virtues of strategic planning and strategic financial planning. While the strategic plan can be aspirational and embody the vision of the school, the strategic financial plan (SFP) is the voice of reason enforcing discipline and patience on the School Head and the Board of Trustees. When implementing the SFP, the Business Manager is stereotypically cast as the grounded person who will not allow the school to be at risk, being both financial manager and risk manager. However, the Business Manager (in partnership with the School Head) also has a real opportunity to be a proactive change agent. The strategic financial plan, while conservative and ensuring the school is not in jeopardy, is also a proactive change instrument that provides an opportunity to innovate and enrich. ISM’s Stability Markers, scored over its 18 metrics, places the school in one of four categories. Using these categories, the Business Manager, with the support of the School Head, can influence strategic planning, using the SFP, to make significant change.

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The Committee on Trustees (COT) continues its critical task of ensuring the Board is well-staffed and can deliver on your school’s strategic plan/strategic financial plan by monitoring the committee process. Without this monitoring function, the committees may not carry out their charges effectively and thus would render the Board unable to take effective action. The Board Committee Support and Accountability Instrument (Tool Four in our series) provides a format that helps to both define and limit the COT’s task.* The following illustrates those parameters for the COT Chair.

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The words “strategic” and “academic” are not comfortable partners. Academics is, by definition, an operations responsibility and rightly the province of the School Head. Strategic implies the Board is involved and has a hand in direction and planning. Still, since 2014, schools have been thinking divergently about academics and asked ISM to assist with and partner in developing strategic academic plans, and the demand for this is growing. Placing the words “strategic” and “academic” in juxtaposition could suggest that ISM’s long-held position about separating strategic and operations is compromised. In the 20th century, that would indeed have been true. Then, academics was a fairly straightforward pursuit that required schools to choose between textbooks printed in Ontario, Texas, and California and ensure that teachers were competent to use them in the classroom. The word itself had a limited reach, being typically applied to the disciplines of math, English, social studies, and science, with foreign language included as a suspicious addition. The arts were clearly not academic, and athletics were not connected to academic pursuits although there was obeisance paid to the scholar-athlete (the two words appearing in opposition to each other). In this world, teachers were polite to one another, but rarely worked together outside their silos—whether by grade or discipline. Budgets were based on last year’s expenditures. Curriculum review was incremental. Students were usually the object, not the subject, of the sentence. Rocking the boat was considered both unnecessary and opposed to tradition.

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The data a school collects is often seen as primarily the domain of the Administrative Team, whose members use the data to inform decisions and drive change. When schools collect data through surveys, however, there are other interested constituents to consider. Communication before, during, and after conducting surveys is essential and must be handled carefully.

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In the first article in this series, we emphasized the importance of the leadership funnel in ensuring leadership continuity through the inevitable personnel changes implicit in a volunteer leadership structure. As Chair of the COT, you already know that excellent people are the precondition for excellent performance. However, they are not sufficient. Determining what “excellent performance” is (execution) and holding committee members and Trustees accountable to that performance is equally important. This recognizes the reality that the school’s volunteer leaders have a limited amount of time to carry out their responsibilities—maybe 60–80 hours a year for a complex task. We recommend that you lead the Committee on Trustees in carrying out four tasks: self-monitoring, reminding, measuring, and maintaining accountability.

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“Rainy-Day” financial aid is one of the three types of tuition assistance identified by ISM, with the other two ensuring “diversity” and “filling empty seats.” While, in theory, rainy-day aid is straightforward in definition, strategy, and budgeting concepts, in reality we have found that it’s not well understood, much less effectively put into practice. By definition, rainy-day financial aid is meant to be a short-term solution to help a family through a temporary setback (e.g., job loss, divorce, medical condition). Strategically, this type of financial aid helps to create a sense of security for families—knowing their children won’t be asked to leave without a chance to get back on their feet. Funds for this aid should be derived from tuition, endowment, or a development initiative.

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