Job 1 for Heads

Heads of school sometimes lose focus on "Job 1" and thereby begin excavating a hole for themselves with their boards.

Thirty years ago, when I was in the hospital business as an administrator, I mistakenly assumed that Job 1 was about clinical quality or the training of our staff or the patient-centeredness of our systems and processes. While those things are critical, I discovered that what really mattered was census, or the number of patients in the rooms for which I was responsible. The quality of my life, and my freedom to think about things like quality, training and patient-centeredness, depended on having at least 95% of my beds full. When census dropped into the 70-89% range, my telephone rang ceaselessly with urgent calls from my bosses to "fill those beds." Discussions of quality and training quickly disappeared and were replaced by figuring out which personnel would be sent home (without pay) and how we could get more heads in our beds fast. My friends in the corporate world experienced much the same thing, only in their cases the numbers were about sales year-over-year, stock price, and return on investment. 

Job 1 for heads of school in the current era is about enrollment; specifically, hitting or exceeding the target number of paying customers. This is not to say that academics, community, climate, values, etc., aren't important; rather, what I want to say is that a head's freedom to focus on those things depends on taking enrollment very, very seriously. Job 2, then, is about demonstrating to your board just how seriously you take enrollment. 

Many smaller independent and international schools have little tolerance for variances in enrollment. For these schools, missing by three or four students means that a head is quickly looking at a deficit equal to or greater than a teacher's salary and benefits. Failing to instill in your board the belief that you grasp this fact and that it keeps you up at night is an all-to-common mistake heads make. You should never let your board members believe that they take enrollment more seriously than you do.