Nut case parents or key customers? The choice is yours.

Doing focus groups today at a JK-8 school on the U.S. west coast.  The parents are, like those everywhere, thoughtful, interested, creative, engaged, opinionated, obnoxious, aggressive, unrealistic and demanding, all at the same time.  

It would be easy to dismiss them as typical parent nut cases.  I mean, they did take time off work to show up and grind their ax at a focus group.  

But, collectively they represent more than US$500K in tuition payments, and thousands of points of contact with others in the community.  To ignore them is suicide.  And the same is true at your school, too.