As you add new Trustees to your Board this summer, make sure that you take steps to build on a successful Board-Head partnership. The following seven procedures are a summary of ISM best practices that enable the Head and Board to work together within a climate of trust and openness.
Salvaging a Constituency-Based Planning Document: Six Steps
In ISM’s terminology, a “long range plan” (LRP) is a constituency-based planning document developed with the participation of current parents, past parents, grandparents, faculty members, and others from the communities served by your school. It’s not just the work of the Board and senior administration. Unfortunately, many long range plans omit one or more of the four necessary ingredients in any planning document, regardless of type.
Indicators of School Crime and Safety
Creating a “safe haven” for the students at your school is a major Board concern, and making sure all the protocols and policies for school safety are in place is a must.
Your Due Diligence as a Trustee
As a Board member, you are expected to carry out your due diligence roles. These essential responsibilities include the following.
Super Board/Board Relationships
Two Boards often govern schools with a religious affiliation. Typically, one of these is charged with direct governance of the school itself. The other is the governing body for the religious entity, and thus indirectly governs the school as well. ISM’s generic term for these “other” governing entities is “Super Board.”
Financial Questions the Head Candidate Should Ask During the Interviews
As a candidate for a private-independent school headship, you must learn, in a short amount of time, a great deal about the school you are considering. If, like many candidates, you have more experience in programmatic areas (e.g., curricular and cocurricular programs, student issues, parent communication, faculty support) than in operations (e.g., facilities, finances, human resources, risk management), acquiring an understanding of a school’s financial condition could present a challenge. Look to the on-site interview(s) as the best time to gather the information you need about the budget and other monetary matters. Make sure you talk to the Chair of the Finance Committee and Business Manager/CFO separately. These people (with the current School Head) will provide the most useful detail in answering your questions.
Ten Essential Rules for Productive Meetings
Meetings are talked about too little and carried out too much. Most schools spend a great deal of time in meetings of one kind or another—e.g., Board committees, the School Head and the Management Team, the Division Heads together with Department Chairs or grade team leaders, the Student Response Team, and faculty meetings. Of course, it is valuable and often essential that people come together in a formal sense and talk about difference-makers in the lives of children. Group networks aggregate information and can examine it more critically. Group members often will determine better solutions and/or outcomes than isolated individuals—but only if the group meets in a way that allows these things to happen. Here, then, are ISM’s Ten Essential Rules for Productive Meetings.
Choice Programs in Private Schools
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice recently released a report focusing on school choice programs in 2013, including vouchers, education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, and individual tax credits/deductions. The report describes programs throughout the United States, listed alphabetically by state.
School Environment Health Programs
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed voluntary guidelines to assist K–12 schools in establishing and implementing environmental health programs in accordance with the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007. In carrying out this statutory mandate, EPA, along with its federal partners, developed these guidelines to help states establish the infrastructure needed to support schools in implementing school environmental health programs.
Strategic Continuity: The Importance of Board Memory
Over the years, ISM’s on-site visits have uncovered a disconcertingly broad range of completeness in the organizational histories provided by school documents and by individuals’ memories. Your school’s “strategic history” provides both constraints and opportunities for its strategic future. As Board President, you should consider a formal review of the quality of your existing historical portrait, take steps to reorganize that portrait if needed, and elevate the quality of your school’s organizational “Board memory.”