This is Talking Out of School, a weekly newsletter about schools, change, leadership and being a human in the 21st century. Thank you to all the subscribers who support this work and thank you particularly to the paying subscribers who make this work possible.
Welcome to 2024, readers, where uncertainty is the gift that keeps on giving!
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Stony Creek Strategy news
January 10th - Julie is visiting with the CT Association of Independent Schools heads to discuss communications in a time of polarization.
January 18th - Crafting Effective School Statements webinar - AISNE member schools
Three Urgent Issues for 2024 (and a little reflection on 2023)
Last year I wrote about three urgent issues of tenuous head of school tenure, staffing and tuition cost/sustainability. All still relevant and mostly making a comeback in 2024…
While I don’t have any numbers or data at my disposal about head of school tenure or turnover, what I can say from highly subjective observation is that it hasn’t become any easier to do the head of school job and there is a lot - a lot! - of exhaustion. As for the many brand new heads who have landed in the deep end of the pool in the 23-24 academic year, please accept this newsletter as a pool noodle. It might not be a life preserver but I hope a few insights and feeling less alone can help keep you afloat.
Staffing - yep, this one is still a thorn in the side. Some people are stretched thin from jobs that are poorly defined and encompass too many responsibilities for every aspect to be done well. Faculty are still sorting out the fallout from learning loss and navigating the sometimes fragile mental health of their students. The labor market is generally strong, the interest in teaching continues to decline and the giant cohort of later stage baby boomers is retiring. Yikes.
In terms of tuition costs and sustainability, what’s been interesting to me is how widely varied the perception of this threat is depending on an individual school’s situation, region of the country, etc. School systems are of course all intertwined and the staffing and leadership issues are of course connected to the high cost of providing such a “luxury good” as an independent school education. What I find interesting is that most of the conversation remains at a 30,000 foot level, at least publicly. I think many of us have schools on our radar that we wonder, how are they making it work? And do I think this lack of public conversation is healthy for this industry? Nope.
Onward!
Three Urgent Issues for 2024
TL;DR:
Leadership at the Top is a Team Endeavor - in such a complicated landscape, the head and board must collaborate and cooperate for the institution to thrive. It’s easy to spend a few hours doing a governance training explaining the board’s lane is X and the head’s lane is Y but given that the lanes are often poorly marked and confusing for heads, trustees and constituents alike, what is really needed is an attitude of collaboration, cooperation and commitment between board and administration, characterized by excellent communication and excellent communications (note the difference here) practices. And Harvard is example #1.
Staffing Problems Aren’t Temporary - we need to think about solutions for “what is” rather than debate or complain about “what should be.” Schools need to start optimizing their hiring practices rather than the same-old and then intentionally foster faculty and staff retention, starting with creating relevant, nimble and satisfying evaluation systems. It is doable! Stop the slow moving crisis around staffing!
Communications is a mission critical activity at the same level as finance, fundraising and student recruitment. Harvard is example #1. It’s not crass or optional. It’s getting your values and your story out to your constituents.
Issue 1: Leadership at the Top is a Team Endeavor
Two core issues percolating around at the heart of all the school uncertainty is the two headed dragon of leadership challenge in 2024. There’s the very difficult job of headship and trying to run complex organizations that are chronically under fire and (often) chronically under-resourced despite a perception of elitism (and that high price tag).
And then there’s the “big bosses” - volunteer boards of trustees who are often unclear on their purpose and not entirely comfortable with their scope of authority, starting with why they’re brought on a board in the first place or what they’re expected to do once there. In schools, these are usually well intentioned people trying hard to do their best under confusing, high stakes circumstances. Compounding the complication of their role is that it’s not entirely clear what their relationship to the rest of the school community is, exactly. Sometimes they remain shadowy figures and become a projection screen for unhappy constituents. Sometimes they see their role as being very visible as constituent representatives to the board.
And I’ll get to Harvard being a case in point below.
And the biggest risk to school leadership is that the difficult job of headship quickly becomes completely untenable if the head and board aren’t actively functioning as a leadership team.
There’s plenty of training opportunities out there where everyone nods and agrees the board’s lane is long-term governance of the school and the head runs the day to day, but when so much goes on day to day impacting the long term, where is the line in practice, really? And what do constituents understand about these lanes?
The key is not getting clear on who’s in what lane - it’s acknowledging and communicating about the fact that the lanes are connected and interdependent. Leaders of educational institutions are in more precarious situations than ever before with constituencies who often seem primed not just to criticize but to seek punitive action. If the board and head are united in public and have excellent candid communication in private, this is almost impossible to do.
I realize there’s a rather long book one could write on that half a page of prose, but for now, let’s reflect on lessons on the recent cases of the university presidents and the related fallout.
In summary:
The governance function can’t always successfully stonewall and hide behind their status in times of controversy. If this is true at Harvard, it can be true anywhere.
A leader’s vulnerability will be exposed at times of stress. All heads have vulnerabilities. How the board responds is key.
Leaders, both heads and board members, need to meaningfully and united-ly engage with constituents. Be good listeners and ask good questions. Demonstrate team work and not a performative game of “who’s the real boss.”
So let’s look at the recent cases of university presidents in the hot seat.
The MIT Corporation has been united in support and crisp and brief in its communications. Nothing to see here folks, so move on! This may change now that Dr. Gay has resigned but I think given MIT’s general culture of being the most serious of serious academics and closing the door of the lab to the concerns of the outside world, I would be surprised.
It is to be noted that both the UPenn president, Elizabeth McGill, and the board chair stepped down at the same time so both the president and board leadership exited as one. Clearly there was no confidence in the joint leadership. But UPenn is also a somewhat unique and complicated governance situation as it’s a Pennsylvania state university and the Wharton School of Business board is separate but powerful in its own right.
Claudine Gay’s issues around her scholarly record compounded the Congressional hearings controversy. If it had been the testimony alone, the media would have likely moved on after the Harvard Corporation re-endorsed her leadership despite continued pressure from certain donors and conservative pundits who clearly targeted her and continue to take aim at the president of MIT. There is a lot of truly vile and racist commentary out there but I think she could have endured with the Corporation’s support. However, it was not a great sign for Gay’s long term job security when the Harvard Crimson was publishing articles about a double standard for plagiarism and demanding her resignation.
Side note: There’s a whole other topic in here about plagiarism, academic dishonesty, how it’s defined and an apparent discrepancy between how it’s perceived related to students and career academics, but that’s for another day. People tend to get all up in their high moral dudgeon about plagiarism but I’ve dealt with so much of it with students and it’s both as simple as people think and more complicated. But it is very frustrating to hear people dismiss plagiarism/failure to attribute/whatever in an adult when students have their lives derailed for the same misstep. Maybe it’s time to assess what punishment fits the crime? More on this later this month.
My general suspicion is the Harvard Corporation’s culture is something like that of the House of Windsor - “never complain, never explain.” For them, this attitude may well be RIP December 2023. And a note - Harvard is about 100 years older than the British House of Windsor (formerly Hanover.) They come by this imperial approach honestly.