Now is the time to set your companion annual agendas—the annual Board agenda and the annual operations (or administrative) agenda. ISM recommends this approach as the most efficient means of implementing your strategic plan. With this approach, both the Board President and the School Head will set aside time toward the end of the school year to establish these two short, but critical, documents in preparation for the upcoming year. (In practice, the President's annual Board agenda is often set in May or June; the Head's annual operations agenda, in July or August. The exact timing is of little consequence.)

As a subset of your next strategic plan—or as a right-now, no-cost, mid-course addition to your current strategic plan—form an ad hoc committee (including Trustees and senior administrators) to craft a financial contingency plan for the worst-case scenario that your school might face. Include in your contingency plan a cluster of "sensitivity markers" that will trigger the plan. (ISM wishes to acknowledge the Board of Trustees at Notre Dame Preparatory School/Marist Academy (MI), which inserted an item of this type into its recently completed, ISM-facilitated strategic plan.)

Many private-independent schools have long had professional human resources advice readily available to them, from either a staff member or an external consultant. Other schools are only now beginning to address this issue, often spurred by inquiries from Board members who work in the business world where the need for HR guidance is well-accepted. ISM believes that in today's complex operating environment, all schools need to assess their employee-related practices on a regular basis and have direct access to expert HR and legal advice.

In a previous issue of I&P, we discussed portions of the results of a survey of parents at 37 private-independent schools in the United States. The demographics and income information presented there set the stage for this article on the importance of various convenience factors and the need for "full-service" schools.

The recently enacted ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) became effective January 1, 2009, significantly expanding the definition of disability and counteracting a number of recent court decisions that had previously limited the scope of the law. Schools need to be aware of the following elements of the updated law when interacting with employees or job candidates who are or may be considered disabled.

In the strategic roles given to various functions within a private-independent school, teachers are not left out. The Board provides the resources (money, facility, and management structure) to support the School Head and Management Team, and the School Head/Management Team provides a predictable and supportive environment within which exceptional faculty can thrive. The faculty's strategic role is to be aware of and drive successful student re-recruitment and new student recruitment. During these uncertain economic times, teachers must understand how critical their roles are in the admission process.

The fourth-ranking ISM Stability MarkerTM deals with the percent of operations expense covered by "hard income," defined in ISM’s benchmarking systems as revenues that are billed (e.g., tuition) or funds transferred internally (e.g., usable interest from an endowment corpus). In ISM’s self-scoring system for Stability Markers, your school begins to earn points on this marker when your percent coverage reaches 92%, and tops out at full credit at 98%. (These percentages are for day schools; ISM’s scale for boarding schools looks quite different.)

ISM has long recommended looking to military personnel—either retirees or those rotating out of service—as a source of quality employees. Veterans are typically highly skilled, professionally trained workers who can perform efficiently under pressure, possess proven leadership and management capabilities, and are accustomed to working with diverse populations. This makes them a potential fit for your school’s operational facilities, coaching positions, and other managerial openings.

Each fall, ISM publishes a set of conversion factors to facilitate the recasting of previous tuitions into current dollars. (See the table on the next page.) We continue to use the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U)—the most readily available "market basket" index, covering a broad range of services and goods including food items, clothing, transportation, and housing. However, we also realize that the CPI-U does not completely reflect expenditures in private-independent schools; it can only serve as a base figure. There are compelling arguments for adjusting your tuition at a rate 2% or more above the overall inflation rate.

We often hear the term "ex officio" when referring to the School Head’s status at Board meetings. The term is often misused and misunderstood.