Part 1: Holding the Trust for Whom?

How do some private, independent schools make the leap from their founding to become true institutions? Almost every private, independent school started out to fulfill a relatively narrow and personal mission, often built around the theories or practices of an educator. My son's long ago elementary school, The Wilson School in St. Louis, began, literally, as Miss Wilson's school in 1913. Miss Wilson was a local educator who had an idea for doing school that she couldn't implement in the public or parochial environments at the time, so she started up her own little school.Somewhere along the winding road between 1913 and today, Miss Wilson gave way to subsequent owners of the school, and in turn they eventually formed a self-sustaining nonprofit corporation to hold the school in trust. With a tweak or two, something like this story is the case at almost all such schools. "Ownership" becomes "trusteeship". But, exactly who are the trustees holding the trust for? How one answers this question is at the core of how governance works in independent schools, and says much about the potential for the school to become an institution; that is, an organization with a purpose and life that transcends those who inhabit the place at any given moment.The textbook answer, of course, is that those governing the school do so by holding the institution in trust for future generations of students. Sometimes we say, "for our children's children." From this perspective, the work of governance, beyond the legally mandated fiduciary parts, is all about strategy and the future. However, judging by what gets talked about by boards, a quite different perspective often seems to be in play. The for whom question seems to draw an answer of "for the teachers and parents." No wonder such conversations often lead to boards adopting a firefighting posture, rather than being on a strategic footing. There are countless fires to fight when one focuses on what is happening in the school today--and doing so is exactly the work of management, not governance.A board holding the school in trust for future generations is at the heart of being an institution. I think it is a necessary and essential precondition for a school to make that leap. A board holding the school on behalf of today's teachers and parents fixes institutional development at a primitive stage. If observers were to listen in on your board and committee members, for whom would they say you hold the trust?