The matrix we call scheduling—that complex interrelationship among time, space, program, and people—is not just a mere description of what is happening in your school. It should also provoke the reflection necessary to understand how the elements of excellent education interact and enable the prime conditions for optimal learning.

The School Head maintains a dual focus on strategic matters that includes: the goals outlined in the annual administrative agenda (derived from the current planning document) and the marketplace variables—Price, Product, Process—that, with relative degrees of emphasis, define the school.

At any given moment, the Board may be operating highly effectively. The same is true of the School Head and Management Team. The problem, however, is always how to sustain high-level leadership over time. As changes occur, when the Board President finally rotates off, or the Head accepts an appointment elsewhere, or a new facility is proposed or a program added, what will ensure that the direction and vitality of the school is not lost?

In Part One of this two-part series, eight critical ingredients and six steps were offered as a foundation on which to build management and leadership education and training systems for your Academic Administrators. Part Two provides a recommended sequence of School Head decisions and actions. The implicit opportunity, both for organizational enhancement and for individual professional growth, is enormous in its potential impact throughout your school. Moreover, its results are cost-effective.

Support personnel may seem invisible in a school. These employees—personnel who are not administrators or faculty—may not appear to be as highly valued, nor as integral as the faculty to the school’s mission and to the education of children. Their roles are largely indirect. But this in no way diminishes their importance in your school’s culture. Take steps to build the faculty/support staff relationship, with the ultimate objective of improving opportunities for students in your school.

Within our schools, there is little systematic training for members of the Academic Administrative Team (those leaders of the faculty who report directly to the School Head) and other levels of academic leadership (e.g., grade-level coordinators). Why does that matter?

The main means of enhancing your advisory program will be through the advisers themselves. Formal solicitation of their assessment of the program provides evaluative data while confirming the high value you place on this program.

Whether your advisory program emphasizes one-to-one advising or group advisory (or probably some of both), the intended beneficiaries of these services are your school’s students. While advisers’ impressions about students’ individual and/or collective engagement in advisory are helpful in gauging the successes of the program, they are not a substitute for well-conceived, formal surveying of students themselves as a resource for enhancing your program.

As you develop or enhance your disaster plan, take time to review your insurance policy with your agent to ensure that your school is adequately covered, beyond your basic flood and fire insurance, for any type of disaster or emergency situation. Coverage in the following areas is often far less than recommended, or may even be excluded, in typical policies. To determine if your risk factors are high in any of these areas, discuss them with your agent and consider increasing your coverage or adding riders if necessary.

In early fall of the 2004-05 school year, ISM conducted a study of School Head leadership to determine those characteristics most closely associated with strong faculty cultures (the criterion variable in the study). That variable—the faculty culture—had been chosen as the study’s anchor in view of two earlier ISM studies.