As an experiment, ISM suggests that your Board list the top strategies or actions you would take if you wanted your school to fail utterly. Then put systems and processes into place to avoid these scenarios.
The following nine "icebergs" are likely to lead to insolvency, weakened organizational stability, and increased bureaucracy ... all conditions that can sink your school's ship.
1. Set tuition each year by leading with the question, “How much of an increase can the parent body stand next year?”
Antidote: Develop a multiyear strategic financial plan by:
- describing the characteristics of your ideal school four to six years from now;
- “costing” that ideal school; and
- determining the (net) tuition gradient necessary to pay for it.
2. Select your new Trustees by asking each spring, “Does anybody know someone who’d be willing to serve on our Board next year?”
Antidote: Form a Committee on Trustees that will “profile the characteristics” of the individuals likely to successfully carry out the Board-level implications of your strategic planning document. Then approach potential new Trustees with statements of this sort: “We have identified you as the best person in our metropolitan area to fill our ‘nonprofit marketing expert’ Board profile slot. Would you be interested in joining our Board? May I describe for you our plans, and your potential role in them?”
3. Have many standing (not ad hoc) committees, and use only current Board members on them.
Antidote: Form most Board committees each May or June in response to the questions, “How shall we organize ourselves to accomplish our Board agenda this year?” and “Who would be the best individuals (Trustees or not) to help us meet our goals?”
4. Use a generic questionnaire (preferably not specific to private-independent schools) for Board self-evaluation, and ask each Trustee to complete the form each year.
Antidote: Ask your Committee on Trustees to rate the Board’s performance each year. This should be based on the Board’s successful or unsuccessful completion of the annual Board agenda which has been derived from the strategic plan written the previous summer.
5. Use a generic form for evaluation of your School Head, and ask each Board member to complete the form annually. Distribute a version of the same form to your faculty each year, and, finally, to your parent body.
Antidote: Ask your Head Support and Evaluation Committee to assist your School Head throughout the school year based on her or his progress on goals agreed on the previous summer, and derived chiefly from your strategic plan. Use the data sources implied by each goal in order not simply to “evaluate,” but to enhance the Head’s (and, thus, the school’s) performance.
6. Make sure your full-Board meetings are “current-event” focused, with the Head’s report as the centerpiece each time.
Antidote: Be sure your Board writes an annual agenda each summer. Place action on a Board committee proposal (not Board committee report) at the heart of every full-Board meeting throughout the year, just as has always (presumably) been the case with your annual budget-approval meeting.
7. Try to focus your Board’s energies on your school’s curriculum and instruction. Under this focus, form as many Board-level “education committees” as possible (e.g., Academic Committee, Cocurricular Committee, Character Development Committee).
Antidote: Board-level direction and oversight of faculty and student programs is inherently confusing to faculty and staff members, who (correctly) view the School Head as the “boss.” Establish a Board-level policy calling for all student- and faculty-related committees to be “School Head committees.” Such committees may, when appropriate, have Trustees serving on them, but they remain the School Head’s committees nonetheless. Enhanced organizational clarity will result.
8. Place as many “constituent representatives” (e.g., Parent Association representative, faculty representative, student council representative, alumni representative, etc.) on the Board as possible. Make sure each is elected by the appropriate constituency.
Antidote: Communicate proactively and rapidly with all constituent groups. Do so in writing via your newsletter (or e-letter) and special mailings. Handle in-person communication by sending one or more Board members—following each Board meeting—to the next meeting of the Parent Association, faculty council, student council, or alumni council. Continuously educate your constituencies on the fact the Board itself is not a constituent-representative body, but a self-perpetuating trusteeship charged with underwriting the school’s mission for the future. No “special lobbying” from any particular constituent viewpoint can be accommodated when the only constituent is the next generation of students (20-30 years from today).
9. Accumulate as much debt as your lenders will allow.
Antidote: Write a strategic financial plan that works from the premise that debt is nearly always the wrong solution to any problem. Institute aggressive major gifts and cash reserve development programs as the desirable “big dollar” solutions.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Trustees Vol. 15 No. 5 Foster Board Objectivity—Avoid Subjectivity
The Source for Trustees Vol. 15 No. 1 Five Strategic Planning Detours You Must Avoid
The Source for Trustees Vol. 14 No. 7 When Board Committees Fail
Additional ISM resources for Gold members:
I&P Vol. 43 No. 4 The ISM Stability Markers: The Fifth Iteration
I&P Vol. 38 No. 14 Erroneous Premises Employed in Tuition Setting
I&P Vol. 41 No. 2 The Board Profile as a Strategic Document
I&P Vol. 42 No. 8 The Head Support and Evaluation Committee: An Update
