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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.
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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
The Student-Centered Department
Volume 40 No. 16 // December 22, 2015
Over time, all schools become adult-centered. Adults have all the power and students have none; faculty and administrators may stay around for three or four decades while students keep passing through. Put power and longevity together and it is clear why the evidence for adult-centeredness is so profound. Being student-centered, thus, is not a given, although it is always assumed in schools. Who would suggest otherwise? The Department Chair (or team leader) as a middle manager has a responsibility to lead a student-centered conversation. As School Head or Division Head, inspire your teams to reflect on your own department culture.
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Auxiliary Income and Unrelated Business Income Tax
Volume 40 No. 16 // December 22, 2015
In 1950, Congress passed legislation to minimize unfair competition between nonprofit groups, which were exempt from paying business income tax, and for-profit businesses, which pay income tax on the profits generated by their business activities. The IRS (and subsequently the courts) scrutinizes a school’s activities according to this balance. There are two basic questions to ponder. What represents legitimate income for a nonprofit (for schools, for example, tuition, fees for services provided, investments, annual fund)? What income, if any, are schools generating that represents unfair competition with a for-profit business? The issue is to decide whether income generated by the nonprofit is a direct outcome of its “primary business” or is ancillary to it.
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The Board of Trustees’ Role in Your Annual Fund
Volume 40 No. 15 // November 24, 2015
The Board of Trustees is the champion of all your fundraising efforts, through their leadership roles in campaigns as well as their own financial support. As a development professional, School Head, or volunteer development leader, you know that the annual fund is one of your most important fundraising programs, providing the platform for developing a culture of philanthropy at your school. Trustees are the school’s volunteer leaders and fiduciary stewards, and therefore play a pivotal role in ensuring that your annual campaign achieves its goals.
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Pandering to the Marketplace or Mission Delivery?
Volume 40 No. 15 // November 24, 2015
There has been a controversy in the past decade about the extent to which private-independent schools should pay attention to marketplace demands. Recognizing and meeting marketplace needs seems sensible, particularly in fluctuating and challenging financial times. ISM challenges that conventional wisdom.
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Revisit Your Bylaws: How Strategic Are They?
Volume 40 No. 15 // November 24, 2015
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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The Advisor as Positive Coach
Volume 40 No. 14 // November 2, 2015
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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Scheduling the 21st Century Service Learning Program
Volume 40 No. 14 // November 2, 2015
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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Board Confidentiality: A Cautionary Note
Volume 40 No. 14 // November 2, 2015
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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The Business Manager as a Change Agent
Volume 40 No. 13 // October 19, 2015
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 and Supportiveness
Volume 40 No. 13 // October 19, 2015
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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