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Monthly Communications Directors Zoom meetups
I am excited to announce that Lauren Castagnola, Director of Communications and Advancement Project Strategy at the University of New Haven, is taking over leadership of this meetup program! We took a pause in March because of spring break, but we’ll be back in April - stay tuned for the date! Lauren has already been busy lining up some fantastic guests for future meetups. I look forward to attending.
Stony Creek Strategy news
Thanks to AIMS, the Association of Independent Michigan Schools and Executive Director Mike Vachow on hosting me this past week for a webinar on Writing School Statements and Sensitive Communications.
Upcoming Engagements
Niche PK-12 Enrollment & Marketing Summit - April 18, 2024 (Virtual)
Rethinking Admissions Strategy: Out with the Old, In with the New
MoonshotOS Lab - April and May, 2024
Innovation Sprint: Creating A Talent Development Model
MarComm Society webinar - April 25, 2024 1pm
Establishing Guidelines on Issuing School Statements
One Schoolhouse Academic Leaders Forum - June 20-21, 2024, Washington DC
Finding Your Leadership Voice featured workshop
Other engagements pending - you’ll hear about it here first!
And now for the main event!
I started writing a post entitled, “What A Reality Show Can Teach Us About School Change” inspired by hearing about many schools struggling to enroll. I think this post will turn out to be fun and (hopefully) helpful, but it’s still in process. The sinking demographics and high competition in some regional markets is manifesting in real time and there are many very good school run by great people having a hard time filling seats and making revenue goals. Unless you’re at the very top of the reputation and resource pyramid in these markets, there’s reason for concern. And you might squeak by in this cycle but the next one is just around the corner. I do think there’s hope but a lot of it depends on how prepared heads and boards are to truly partner and face reality with grace, creativity and positive energy. It’s about kids, after all.
Since March is about 245 days long, there’s still one more week before the end of the month digest edition, so stay tuned.
Enrollment worries aside, it also feels like a good percentage of my time recently has taken up discussing difficult or complicated parent problems and communication, so I thought it might be time to re-up this post. Strangely enough, I originally published it almost exactly a year ago, so maybe in the winter is where parent problems come to a head? I also can’t get this recent Slate article, “The Parents in My Classroom,” out of my head. So, here is the March 2024 version of Meet the Parents.
In a world in transition, perhaps the most anxious school constituency are parents. And given the world today, it is a sane and normal response to be anxious. We’re not going back to the way things were; we’re figuring out a new normal. I have great sympathy for parents who are trying to navigate this while doing what’s best for their kids. It’s one thing for the stakes to be about yourself or another mature adult - it’s another thing entirely to consider the impact on your child’s future.
And life is hard, people are often more fragile than they appear, banged up a bit and tired from their travels, looking for an efficient way to get from “undesirable situation A” to “perhaps-better situation B.” And then throw a struggling, unhappy child in the mix.
And then whatever a family is paying for tuition, with very few exceptions, it is a stretch and a sacrifice for that family. I don’t know many families who write that check without thinking hard about it. And in the case of boarding school, not only is that family making a financial sacrifice, they are sacrificing time with their child as well.
In the NAIS “jobs to be done” framework on student recruitment, the bottom line is that if a student is applying to your school, something is going on that has made them look for a change because the most obvious option - usually the school system the parent thought long and hard about when they moved into their home - has proved not to suit their child.
And in some cases, families don’t fully disclose what job they are really looking for as they enroll in your school. A change of scene doesn’t instantly eliminate anxiety, depression, eating disorders or difficulties making friends. A different school doesn’t solve undiagnosed learning disabilities or ADHD. It doesn’t resolve tensions at home.
Schools are getting a front row seat to a family dynamic and I can only imagine how vulnerable that can make parents feel.
So it is quite understandable that parent relations have become more and more complicated over the past few years. But in general - the reason for all this prefacing context - is approaching parent relations with some empathy in your heart, even for difficult parents, goes a long way. Even when it’s super hard and believe me, I’ve been in those situations. I was even in a situation where an angry parent insulted my dog. So weird!
And the “rule of thumb” I’ve been giving people this winter is:
Foster interpersonal relationships
Engage with ideas
Establish expectations and boundaries for behavior
The reasons behind tense conversations with parents are a wide range and I would divide them up into two general categories between the “special requests” and the “complaints and grievances.”
Special Requests
There are so many possible requests - parents who repeatedly request for their student to leave super early for vacations to the requests to be exempted from an academic or co-curricular core requirement. And in the scheme of things, is the world going to stop rotating on its axis if a student doesn’t take four years of math? Did I always think in a 25 year plus career that 100% of school programs, inside and outside of the classroom, were perfectly executed? The answer to both is NO. Of course.
But the larger point here is that as a head or a senior administrator, you are there to partner with families AND represent the collective values and principles of the school. You have a relationship in the context of an institution that existed before you arrived and will be there long after you (and the family) are gone. To use the example of a requirement, requirements evolve over time and perhaps you may privately think they need to be revisited, but at the moment, they are what they are. The understanding of everyone who delivers the school’s program knows these are the standards required of every student.
School/parents relations are a balancing act. There is no “the school is right” 100% of the time and there is no “the parent is right” 100% of the time. Either extreme makes for an unhealthy culture. What you are doing is nurturing a relationship that exists in the context of the mission of the institution. That means tending to the relationship - being responsive, a good listener, asking good questions, bringing conversation back to what you both desire - the best for the child - AND it means preserving the integrity and credibility of the institution. Most schools are not “choose your own adventure” and you will need to be able to develop responses that are warm but clear and firm about where there can be compromise and where it is not possible.