Hiring, Nurturing, and Evaluating the Private School Head: How to Solidify the Board-Head Partnership

As members of the Board of Trustees at your private school, you have many duties. One of the most important is hiring, nurturing, and evaluating the School Head. The Head is the Board’s only employee and is the person who implements the Board’s strategic plan and strategic financial plan at the school’s operational level. The School Head maintains the school’s mission.
Boards can—and should—have excellent relationships with their Heads, and this book can help you solidify those relationships. At the core of the book’s advice are three critical principles. For the best success, the Board must:
treat the School Head in predictable and supportive ways;
work reciprocally—that is, carry out its duties with the same assiduousness as is expected of the Head; and
ensure that it operates strategically to allow the Head to act operationally.
We will delve into each of these and related areas as the book progresses.
This book is based on the experience of the Consultants of Independent School Management and:
their consulting in private schools for more than four decades;
articles published in ISM’s management advisory letter Ideas & Perspectives; and
materials used for teaching in ISM’s various workshops and presentations.
Throughout this book, we use a fictional, K–12, coed day school, Exempli Gratia Academy, to provide examples and samples to better explain the strategies and techniques discussed. These are intentionally generic so you can easily adapt them for your school’s unique character and mission.