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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.
Five Characteristics of Outstanding Managerial Foresight
Volume 28 No. 7 // June 4, 2003
Your success as Head of School depends in part upon your ability to respond to challenges successfully. That, in turn, is a function of your adeptness in recognizing potential hot spots—i.e., new problems and threats with capacity to reach real significance—before they rise to the level of “challenges.”
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Recognize the Marketing Opportunities of Parent Surveys
Volume 28 No. 7 // June 4, 2003
ISM recommends that schools survey their parent bodies on a regular basis (every two or three years). Do not overlook the marketing opportunities implicit in reporting the survey results.
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Governance and Fiscal Vigilance
Volume 28 No. 6 // May 4, 2003
The confusion and anger that surround recent corporate scandals in the public sector indicate that stock-holders and stakeholders (to use the term more appropriate for private-independent schools and the not-for-profit sector) are turning their attention to the question of Board “due diligence.” What is the Board’s role in overseeing the operation of an institution? How is “due diligence” defined? How can the Trustees maintain the necessary delicate balance between governance and management of school operations?
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Creating a Strategic Culture in Your School's Board of Trustees: Fostering Objectivity
Volume 28 No. 5 // April 11, 2003
“Emotional awareness starts with attunement to the stream of feeling that is a constant presence in all of us and with a recognition of how these emotions shape what we perceive, think, and do.” – Daniel Goleman, Working With Emotional Intelligence, p. 55 (New York: Bantam Books, 1998)
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Good to Great: Implications for Private-Independent School Management
Volume 28 No. 4 // March 30, 2003
From time to time, a book written for the corporate sector calls out for the consideration of private-independent school leaders. Such a book is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t, (HarperCollins: 2001), Jim Collins’ second book on strategic management thinking.1
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A Due Diligence Checklist for Board Trustees
Volume 28 No. 4 // March 30, 2003
As Board President, you regularly focus on the specific, strategic goals of the school as well as the strategic structure and function of the Board itself. In the latter area, you rely on your Committee on Trustees to monitor, evaluate, advise, and counsel the full Board. You and this committee may use a written evaluation instrument, administered annually, to provide data on the adequacy of the Board as a whole.
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A Rationale for Processing Financial Aid In-House
Volume 28 No. 3 // March 6, 2003
ISM has consistently recommended that schools tie financial aid to mission. The primary reasons for a school to offer financial aid are to: – fulfill an aspect of its mission by creating and sustaining a student body that is best served by the mission, – fill vacant seats with mission-appropriate students, and/or – enhance the socioeconomic diversity of the student body (or other possible strategic objectives).
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Planning School Grounds for Outdoor Learning
Volume 28 No. 3 // March 6, 2003
At many private-independent schools, scheduling and space issues continue to frustrate school administrators. Yet, many schools also dedicate time and money to maintaining their campus grounds—space that often lies vacant during much of the school day. Why not take advantage of this available space by creating outdoor classrooms and learning areas?
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: The Not-So-Simple Health Care Privacy Rule
Volume 28 No. 2 // February 10, 2003
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was designed primarily to enable employees who change or lose their jobs to move seamlessly from one employer health plan to another. HIPAA mandated that health care providers issue a "portability certificate" to an employee covered under a health plan." This rule ensures that the employee (and other insured dependents) are covered under the new employer's health plan without any pre-existing condition restrictions or other waiting periods.
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PILOTs and SILOTs: To Pay or Not to Pay—Is That Even the Question?
Volume 28 No. 1 // January 13, 2003
Several recent articles aimed at nonprofit organizations—including private-independent schools—have discussed the topic of PILOTs (Payments In Lieu of Taxes) and SILOTs (Services In Lieu of Taxes). (See, for example, “In Lieu of Taxes: What Can Schools Do When the Taxman Comes Knocking?” Independent School, Spring 2002, and “Navigating PILOTs: Increased Pressure for ‘Voluntary’ Nonprofit Tax Payments,” The Nonprofit Quarterly, Summer 2002.) But these articles have not taken their “heads up” far enough
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