Confusion exists on the issue of a desirable level of coverage of operations expense with hard income. ISM hears frequently a reference to 85% as some sort of norm or even benchmark.
Media Use Among Young Children Continues to Rise
We’re no strangers to the fact that screen time use is on the rise among students. This increase in students’ media exposure can impact many areas of school operations, including policies surrounding student device use, how students complete homework and other tasks at home, and how faculty and staff can best relate to and support students.
Four Tips for Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences
Parent-teacher conferences occur a few times each year at your school. These meetings give parents and teachers an important opportunity to talk about each student’s progress, while discussing any issues and setting a course for future success.
While these meetings fall into the purview of your faculty, division heads, and possibly department chairs, the School Head also has an important role to play during parent-teacher conferences. It’s vital that you express excitement for these critical, relationship-establishing encounters, and help facilitate them.
Three Dimensions of Meaningful Professional Development
The beginning of the school year adds many duties and tasks to your to-do list—welcoming students and families back to campus, hosting Back to School Night and other events, ramping up classes, and much more.
This is also when the School Head begins planning the year’s professional development for faculty and administrators. Quality professional development that’s carefully planned and focused can directly correlate to higher levels of student engagement, satisfaction, and performance.
How to Spur a Successful Survey Initiative
You make important decisions every day in your school. From deciding what actions will support the strategic plan to creating a quality experience for students, families, and employees, you want to truly understand what your constituencies want before implementing any new initiatives.
5 Elements to Consider When Setting Your Financial Aid Policy
Setting the correct financial aid policy for your school allows you to more consistently and accurately award the right amount of aid to mission-appropriate families. Learn strategies for setting a mission-appropriate financial aid policy that makes sense for your families, your school, and your community with our white paper, 5 Elements to Consider When Setting Your School’s Financial Aid Policy.
Student Engagement’s Impact on Stress and Well-Being—What Your School Must Know and Do
It is a distressing and growing issue that private-independent school students are showing increasing levels of stress, substance use, risky behavior, and anxiety. Recommended strategies for mitigating stress and managing mental health, while improving student well-being, include enactment of a healthy daily schedule and yearly calendar, and a predictable and supportive faculty culture, with effective advisory and counseling programs. Recent ISM research with nearly 13,000 students in private-independent middle and upper schools demonstrates that increased student engagement must be added to that list.
Annual Statements Show the Value of Employee Benefits
As the School Head or Business Manager, you know how much the school spends to provide employee benefits. It’s frustrating when faculty, staff, and administrators do not take advantage of these programs to the fullest, don’t value them, or, worse yet, don’t even know they exist. This tends to be a reality in most organizations—not just schools. In our fast-paced society, unless people perceive that the information directly pertains to them, it may sometimes be hard to gain their attention.
Reinvent Your Whole-Faculty Meetings
Whole-faculty meetings—the phrase alone makes eyes glaze over. Administrators often view these sessions as a necessary evil. Teachers routinely consider them one of the least productive uses of their time.
Is Tuition Remission a Legitimate Employee Recruitment and Retention Strategy?
Many school leaders view tuition remission as a teacher and staff recruitment and retention tool, and a means of keeping competitive with other private-independent schools. However, tuition remission often turns the employee-school relationship into a business transaction. School Heads and Boards often claim that they have to offer this perk—otherwise good candidates will be lured to other schools. And it’s not just teachers and staff. This benefit is often an intrinsic part of the contract for the Head and other administrators as well.