When a Board’s internal problems keep it from moving forward in its responsibilities to the school, the Board President and Executive Committee must act.

As a Board member, part of your due diligence includes risk management at your school and making sure you have insurance to cover employment practices liability. While the School Head and Management Team ensure that policies and procedures are in place and implemented, the Board is ultimately responsible for any legal costs that may incur if a case is brought against the school.

December always produces acts of generosity, charity drives, and feel-good stories. The big so far this season that exploded virally is the photo of NYPD Officer Lawrence Primo giving a new pair of boots to a homeless, barefoot man on the street. (Posted to the NYPD Facebook page by the tourist who captured it on her cell phone produced 1.6 million views and 275,000 likes)

Professional development, learning opportunities, training—whatever the name, it is designed to keep your school and your school community moving forward. For your administrators, your faculty, and your staff, attending workshops and seminars provides professional and personal growth, the opportunity to network with their private-independent school peers, and hopefully fresh ideas and perspectives that will enrich your students’ experience. And, of course, professional development should help strengthen your school’s viability overall.

In last month's issue, we talked about open houses. This month, we want to share some creative ideas that we found on the ISM Admission e-list. The holiday season always generates a lot of service projects to help those in need, troops overseas, the elderly, shut-ins, and others who may not be able to be with their families, or have the means to fully care for themselves or their families, etc.

LinkedIn has gone through a recent metamorphosis. As with all technology, it’s never a constant for long. Once again, we’re faced with acclimating ourselves to a series of new features. This most recent change, however, could possibly impact your school’s hiring season.

How many times a day do you see or hear ads from cell service providers, telling potential customers how they offer faster service, better coverage, and cheaper rates than the other guy? They spend all their time and effort attempting to lure new customers. Same goes for cable television providers. But what effort goes into retaining their customers? Generally, not much. These services usually have their customers nailed into two-year contracts. It’s easy to argue that the law of inertia tends to keep customers where they are beyond two years—and the thought that it's not really worth the effort to move.

The faculty hiring season will soon be upon us once again. In preparation, we want to share a few tips from HR and recruiting experts as quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Ruth Mantell, "Must Have Job Skills in 2013". While these experts spoke from the candidate’s perspective, we’ve turned around each point to consider the key skills that employers (schools) need to identify in interviews.

The National Institute for Prevention of Workplace Violence, Inc. has released its 2013 Workplace Violence Fact Sheet, a repository of information, statistics and charts on workplace violence presented to give Human Resources, Threat Management, Security, Risk Management and Operational Managers current information on workplace violence.

In a recent e-Letter, we discussed the importance of developing a robust crisis plan. We suggested you begin by selecting your Crisis/Risk Management Team (CRM). The focus of this team would be to perform an initial risk assessment to identify concerns and determine which risks present the greatest exposure to the school—that is, which risks should be addressed first (triaging). This team should also be responsible for developing general, overarching goals for your school’s crisis plan.