RG175 Blog

A couple of renegade trustees—sometimes only ONE—can turn an effective board into a contentious, unsupportive, parsimonious, or a dysfunctional one; often the board turns into all of these. So how can you screen new trustees effectively? And is it possible to get rid of the “bad seeds.” Screening... read more

It’s so seductive, so intuitive, so logical. It stands to reason that casting a wide net will result in more applications and more enrollments. And when the economy is “hot,” perhaps this strategy will work. But the reality is that “being all things to all people” is a bad marketing strategy. It oft... read more

“Aren’t you glad you got out of school headship when you did?” I have heard this question, or variations on this theme, often over the last year, and I have generally answered in the affirmative. What was already a difficult occupation has become monumentally more pressured since the onset of Covid.... read more

Story Number OneEarly in my administrative career, the school was struggling with a weak French program. We decided to bring in a foreign language expert to spend several days examining the program, sitting in on classes, and talking to students. At the end of the last day, she gave me several actio... read more

In these difficult times new heads of school are often tasked with building enrollment in order to achieve financial sustainability. In the minds of many trustees, the Herculean task seems straight-forward. More articles in the local newspaper, an upgrade of the website, perhaps a stronger social me... read more

Transforming an Independent School: An Interview with Mark Davis, Head of St. Luke’s School, CT Despite the uptick in independent school enrollment due to the pandemic, few serious observers believe that the issue of financial sustainability is going away post-pandemic. The trend has been clear for... read more