Financial Sustainability, Value, and Unnecessary Anxiety

Every business enterprise, whether nonprofit or for-profit, has a basic responsibility to attend to sustainability. Businesses establish a mission to serve their clientele, whether shareholders or stakeholders, with the intention of being successful for the long term. However, in the private-independent school sector, sustainability and the discussions around this topic have become increasingly focused on a misplaced concern. Conversations about sustainability often begin from the following premise—“Our tuitions have outpaced inflation for years. If we do not address this, the numbers suggest that our schools may not be sustainable.” ISM believes that addressing the sustainability issue in this manner leads to well-intentioned but wrong conclusions.

Assets and Liabilities of the Advisory Board

Community and business leaders, revered alumni, and distinguished individuals are often asked to serve on Advisory Boards. Most such Boards are essentially honorific—established by schools to keep in contact with people whose names, experience, and funds can be of assistance on occasion. Members might include Trustees who have served your school long and faithfully, major donors of the past, and people of outstanding talent who may refuse full Board membership. Despite the form and membership of the Advisory Board, the potential for good or bad is about the same. Members of such groups must be constantly cultivated and their ideas solicited. If this does not happen, the Advisory Board becomes meaningless, the “honor” nonexistent, and feelings turn negative. In fact, this is the prevailing pattern at many schools. Use the following strategies to avoid this pitfall.

Reports To and From the Finance Committee

Board members are ultimately responsible for the financial stability of the school, and part of their due diligence requires them to develop a strategic financial plan and a complementary budget. Trustees must keep tabs on budgetary issues, to ensure the strategic financial plan is progressing. However, actual budgets may not always jibe with the projected budgets developed by the Finance Committee. For this reason, the Business Office should provide frequent reports to the Finance Committee.

A Guide to Responsible Survey Data Analysis

This is the third article in a three-part series on collecting and using data to assess your school and advance your school’s strategic initiatives. The first article dealt with building a “culture of data” in your school. The second outlined best practices for launching a successful survey initiative—from choice and design of the surveys to timing and implementation strategies. This article examines proper analysis and use of the data you have collected. While this is the last step chronologically, it is far from least. Data misinterpreted or misused can be more detrimental than no data at all, with consequences ranging from divisiveness within a faculty to expensive and misguided decisions to dramatic public relations issues with legal ramifications. These consequences are not unusual or hypothetical; this article is the response to a need presented to ISM by schools that have faced exactly these problems.

Five Key Reasons to Develop a Head Evaluation Process

When it comes to evaluating the School Head, many Boards simply avoid the process. Their rationale is, “Everything’s fine! Why take on another time-consuming, bureaucratic task?” In other schools, the Board President distributes an all-purpose leadership ratings form of some sort, tallies the results, and sets up a meeting with the Head to make a few suggestions. Neither tactic proves helpful for the School Head looking for direction and support. So, why go to all the trouble of setting up a true evaluation process—forming a Head Support and Evaluation Committee (HSEC), determining criteria and method, putting it into practice, and fine-tuning it yearly as ISM suggests? Here are five key reasons.

Action Minutes Turn Good Intentions Into Accomplishments

Beyond your formal minutes from Board meetings, you should also have “action minutes” that capture casual suggestions or observations and turn them into agreed-upon tasks. For example, during the course of a discussion, a Board member might say, “Great idea—we should look into it,” or “Lori’s committee could tackle that project.” Three meetings later, you realize there’s been no follow-up. Or, worse yet, everyone’s forgotten the matter entirely.

School Head Longevity and Attrition

A new study (building on previous work) throws important light on School Head longevity and attrition—perhaps something of some concern to you, the Board President. The statistics on this are extremely hard to get industrywide, and many numbers have been thrown around based on gut feeling or personal experience. A report from the National Center for Education Statistics sampled 7,400 public and 1,700 private schools to obtain the findings on school principals.* The study allows us to compare two different calendar years—2008–2009 and 2012–2013. The following table considers whether the School Head (principal in the study) remained at the school from one year to the next, left the position of Headship entirely from one year to the next, moved to take up a Headship at another school, or stayed at the school. The column marked other denotes those for whom there is no information available. The base year for 2008–09 was 2007–08; the base year for 2012–2013 was 2011–2012.
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