Five Steps To Close Enrollment Gaps

It a sad fact - sometimes April showers bring disappointing enrollment results

Welcome to the Talking Out of School newsletter! If you were forwarded this email, hit the subscribe button to get weekly insights into applied leadership for your independent school or nonprofit. Thank you for your support!

Here’s more information on program offerings from Julie Faulstich and Stony Creek Strategy. Contact us - always happy to chat!

Five Steps To Close Enrollment Gaps

There are schools that have record enrollment and congratulations to you! Your hard work paid off and the stars aligned. Enjoy! Woo hoo!

Then there are the results that can range from a bit disappointing to downright panic inducing. I’ve been there. It’s no fun, plus you can’t help but keep turning over in your head where you went wrong. Our school is so great and everyone worked so hard!

It happens. Demographics are unfavorable to schools in many areas of the country. Schools at the higher end of the food chain are admitting more kids who in the past would have been delighted with an acceptance at a mid-tier school. Rinse and repeat down the chain. Tuition is high and competition from all sides keeps increasing. Trends sneak up on you and trickles of changes in behavior patterns are all of a sudden floods.

And remember, it’s always easier for families to choose the public school option! Many public schools are outstanding, free and have no application process. 

But now it’s April and you have even more work to do but this work is scrappier and opportunistic, it has less of the nice ritualistic markers that roll out over the academic year calendar - the open houses, the application deadlines. 

I have been there! More than once. You have my sympathy.

And more importantly, you should have hope. While I always found the period from mid-April to Labor Day anxiety inducing, every new enroll was also cause for celebration. We all got to know individual families better. My director of enrollment management put up with me haunting his office multiple times a week to go over the pool. We partnered. We problem solved. Both with families and with each other. We made it happen, even in those cycles where it felt it took every ounce of our collective effort.

So here’s five thoughts on how you can move the needle now.

1. Re-enrollment/potential attrition

Remember how the admissions office is also responsible for re-enrollment? It’s so not-sexy compared to enrollment but it is crucially important. 

• Is everyone who’s coming back re-enrolled? If not, work with those families now! Don’t make assumptions!

• Have you settled everyone’s financial aid? Get this squared away!

And are there any currently re-enrolled families in danger of attrition? What are you hearing through the grapevine? If you do hear rumors, reach out to the family in a compassionate way. Sometimes - often! - people don’t want to complain because if their child stays at the school they worry there will somehow be reprisals of some sort. You may need to be proactive. And if it’s a financial issue, sometimes people have no problem coming forward but other times it is a source of pain and shame. And maybe just a little more financial aid can make a world of difference. 

Remember - it is so much easier to retain a student than to recruit a brand new one!

Tips for the future: Make sure your re-enrollment process starts early and the information going out to parents is clear as to what is expected of them. Be warm and be professional. Be buttoned up. This is important and can be an easy victory for your overall enrollment picture.

2. Revisit all the “we never”s

Here are a few popular “we never”s:

• We never take new students during the school year.

• We never take new students in grade (x).

• We never take students who need more than light academic support.

• We never take students who may need to miss school for other obligations.

• We never take English language learners.

• We never take students who have financial need more than (arbitrary number or percentage)

• We never take students from (consultant with a specific area of speciality that falls into the historic “never” column)

• We never take homeschoolers.

I keep thinking of “nevers” I’ve heard about over the years and could keep going!