Here is some food for thought for the holiday break. The holiday break was always hands down my favorite because the whole world seems to shut down (except for end of calendar year annual fund gifts…sorry, development folks!) and my email and phone were so quiet.
And despite the “lay it on the line” tone below, I am very hopeful for 2023. The time is now.
Can’t kick the can down the road much more, stuff’s gonna hit the fan, something’s gotta give - pick your cliche. But much as there was a lot of talk, talk, talk about technology disrupting education before the pandemic and then it all exploded over us, these three issues are barreling towards schools like a fully loaded Mac truck on a downward slope. We ignore them at our peril in 2023.
Head Tenure
School cultures are deeply rooted, deeply relational and thrive on stability. They generally need patient and warm but firm leadership to continue adapting to the contemporary world.
School cultures are not cut out for rapid head of school tenure and by “rapid” I mean 5 years or less. And really, for many schools, it’s less than ten years. The amount of disruption and chaos caused by the head of school turnover is not to be underestimated. Even if leadership is not inspired or ideal in every way, a consistency and predictability specific to the leader wafts through a school like smoke to keep many complex functions running to serve the kids. The first year, a new head is establishing these expectations and the final year, it all begins to shift, even with the best of intentions. So a five year tenure really means only three consecutive years of stability. Ouch!
We know the era of 20 plus year headships is over, but an era of five year headships enters the danger zone for many schools.
Something’s gotta give - either school culture has to change or both the leadership transition process and the nature of headship has to change. And I think we all know which one has a better chance of changing in the short term.
To keep the cliches coming - there is low hanging fruit in creating a more intentional and managed transition, both for the outgoing and the incoming heads and in specific board education and training around leadership transition. And then there are the bigger shifts around the role of the head position itself. And this is just as relevant to executive director positions in other mission driven non profits.
Tuition Cost/Market Demand
I got into independent schools in 1996 and people’s hair was on fire back then about the cost of tuition. And over the past 26 years, tuition has just increased.
But a basic part of this problem is that we fail to even contemplate that the cost and the price of tuition don’t always have a realistic relationship, particularly in the era of the net tuition revenue model. (And don’t get me wrong - I’m a fan of NTR.)
It is an unavoidable fact that any service that has to be populated by large numbers of highly qualified employees is going to be a high priced, luxury service. Mission driven organizations are not designed to be luxuries. We have nurtured economies in a number of ways that have now reached their expiration date. Schools have traditionally paid its labor force less than other industries because it was a calling, not for filthy pragmatists. Benefits were often skimpy. Programs outside the classroom were slim. Deferred maintenance needs, including often dilapidated faculty housing, went unmet.
None of these tactics work in 2022. Budgets increase and increase in order to deliver what we promise to students and families.
So the cost is already high but then once we factor in the cost to fill the school in either direct dollar for dollar scholarship or “cash you don’t collect” in a net tuition revenue model - and the price becomes astronomical. And thus a non virtuous cycle repeats and repeats. You push the limits of the families who can pay to underwrite the families who can’t.
There are the dollars and sense reasons to leave the system alone - most schools have parts of their pool who see the value and can pay - and a few percentage points a year increase makes little difference. Why leave money on the table?
Then there is perception - even if you take out your financial aid line item, the cost to educate a student is still very large. But many families see a tuition reset as an indicator of lower quality than one of your school’s neighbors.
And we have trained our market by not being transparent about how cost relates to price.
And then there’s the fact that the families who couldn’t afford full tuition now won’t be able to afford a full tuition $10,000 lower, either.
What are the answers, other than building a significant endowment? (And can we get creative and less siloed about our endowment investments, or would school cultures prevent the cooperation needed to turn small individual school endowments into larger, “community foundation” like endowments that have more investment power?)
This is a tough one. I have also been hearing about “alternative sources of revenue” for years. Most alternative sources of revenue need creativity, dedicated staffing we can’t afford probably years of losses before significant contributing to the bottom line.
That leads me to number three.
Staffing still in recovery
Is your school still rebuilding its work force post pandemic? Have you had faculty leave at a weird time over the past few years, or even this year? Are your hiring pools robust? Do you have the internal bandwidth to hire well since, if you’re understaffed, you’re probably spread thin? Do you have the budget to hire the top candidates?
This relates to both of my other points. Many schools both had to invest during the height of COVID and also looked at ways to balance the scales by trimming. No one realized how complicated it would be to regroup and get clarity on what the “right size” of staffing is coming out of the pandemic, and how fundamentally the workforce would change.
Economist Mohammed El-Erian (Ezra Klein Show podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-mohamed-el-erian.html )said in this interview that despite much analysis, something inexplicable is going on with labor force numbers. People have just disappeared. It’s going to take time to figure out where they have gone and what it will take to bring them back to the workforce. But he thinks there is something different afoot than we have ever seen before in the modern era.
Gulp.
An educational leader I greatly respect told me recently that she sees a growing crisis in staffing at every level in lower schools. People fled and they are not returning. And for those qualified lower school teachers out there, they can make far more money in a public school or even on the private market as a nanny, because there are shortages all around.
A million years ago, I was delighted to get any high school gig as a mid twenties graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing and even more delighted to get free, crummy, housing with no private entrance and where my neighbors were all sixteen year old girls. I was making a very low wage and I had to contribute a large percentage towards my health insurance. I felt like I won the lottery.
Times have changed.
Salaries have to be competitive and people need to hit the ground running to deliver the best possible education to the students.
Parents are paying a luxury price and they expect not just small classes, but fully staffed health centers, maker spaces, state of the art athletic facilities, etc.
Many heads feel like every day is trying to hold back the tide.
No one seems happy.
Something’s gotta give!
But I think if we can all admit something’s gotta give, starting at the board of trustees level, we can actually think outside the box and improve this situation.
Independent schools and non profits are full of incredibly talented and dedicated people and I know the innovative thinking is out there if we can harness it and implement it.
The first step is admitting the problem.
We can do it! Get some rest and think on it.
Have a wonderful, well deserved holiday, everyone -
Julie
Due to family events, I didn’t get to finish my piece on head of school transition for this month but that will come in early January. A Stony Creek Diary edition will be out next Tuesday. And I will send out a final, brief 2022 TOOS recap the last week in December.
What do you think the most read post of the year was? The answer may surprise you!
Happy, Merry -
JF