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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.
Marketing Your School’s Transportation Options
Volume 48 No. 6 // June 1, 2023
Parents seek convenient services that maximize their time and minimize their stress. For many, getting their children to and from school is the most inconvenient aspect of life in a private school. If your school provides transportation options, you, as Marketing Communications Director, have a mark...
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Succession Planning Strategies: Enhanced Predictability
Volume 48 No. 6 // June 1, 2023
Hiring and keeping a talented School Head is one of the Board’s major responsibilities. But, frankly, most Boards only allocate time to Head succession when the School Head resigns and the urgent need to find the next leader is forced on them. Boards must understand that Head succession planning is ...
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Scenario Planning and the Next Head Search
Volume 48 No. 6 // June 1, 2023
Periodically, a private-independent school faces the challenge of launching a search for a new School Head. While Boards comprise people who can define the search components and estimate the monetary costs, they may not consider the indirect “expenses” in personnel, time, and organizational dis...
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The Essential Alignment of the Head’s Beliefs and Talents With the School’s Mission and Needs
Volume 48 No. 6 // June 1, 2023
School headship has always been challenging, but the proliferation of failed headships in private-independent schools during the past five years has illuminated the profound significance of the “match” between School Heads and schools (and their primary constituencies). One key Stability Marker (Sta...
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DEIJB: Admission and Enrollment Management
Volume 48 No. 5 // May 1, 2023
Admission Offices face new challenges every year, from meeting enrollment targets to the pressure of balancing selectivity while expanding access to students and families with unique profiles. A well-run admission department should yield an incoming student class whose academic priorities and values...
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Fraught or Fruitful: The Complex Relationship Between Business and Development
Volume 48 No. 5 // May 1, 2023
The ISM Circle was designed to graphically depict the ideal management structure for an independent school. In the lower half of the Circle (see the accompanying graphic), you’ll find those administrative functions that lay the financial and operational foundation of your school’s mission (e.g., fin...
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Improve the Group Dynamics on Your Board
Volume 48 No. 5 // May 1, 2023
Group dynamics impact any organization’s successful operation. Your school’s Board of Trustees is no exception. Specific behaviors and roles are common in groups, and Trustees must always be cognizant of these group elements to keep your Board’s efforts on track and strategically productive. Often t...
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The Major Gift Toolbox: Donor Personas, the Donor Cycle, and the Giving Pyramid
Volume 48 No. 5 // May 1, 2023
To consistently build a productive major gift program, you, as Development Director, must learn to manage relationships with a broad spectrum of individuals who have varying attachments to your school. Development teams in private-independent schools are generally too small to have one or more indiv...
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Nine Critical Considerations in Your Approach to Faculty Compensation
Volume 48 No. 4 // April 1, 2023
Teacher compensation is an ongoing topic of conversation and debate in independent schools. It’s often the first “fix” schools look to when dealing with a negative faculty culture or teacher shortage, even though research shows school atmosphere and predictable and supportive leadership have a greater influence on a teacher’s choice of where to work.
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Determining Equitable Teaching Loads
Volume 48 No. 4 // April 1, 2023
A question we are frequently asked when working with schools during scheduling consultations is, “How do we determine the full-time teaching load?” On its face, this seems to be a straightforward question with an easy answer.
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