The New Normal is Not New; It's Just Normal

Judy Schechtman and I moderated a session today at the NAIS Annual Conference in Orlando on strategies for managing the effects of enrollment volatility in small schools. In prepping for our session, we defined a small; school as one with fewer than the median number of students for schools of its type, according to the NAIS database (706 for K-12 day schools and 277 for elementary schools). However, a substantial number of attendees were from large schools with more than 1,000 students.Our panel included two heads of school, Josie Holford from Poughkeepsie Day School and Thad Falkner from The Wilson School, and one board chair, Ashley Gill from The Wilson School. From their comments and those of many people in the audience, we extracted the following recommendations:

• Accept that constant parental "shopping" for what is on offer at other schools will lead to increasing enrollmenty fluidity and fewer "lifer" students;
• Tomorrow's successful teacher will be like a utility player in baseball--capably of playing many positions even within the same game;
• Boards and administrators must avoid a rush to ascribe blame for volatility that falls within the school's historic range, especially blame based on an individual trustee's anecdotal observations;
• Schools must continuously "sharpen their edge" by refining and improving on factors relating to the core value proposition; and
• The board must avoid becoming distracted from long-term strategy by the new normal of year-to-year swings in student numbers.

We know that in small schools isolated events take on exaggerated meaning. The biggest take-away from the session was that enrollment volatility is not isolated--it is common to many schools and likely to form part of the new basis of assumptions on which business planning for schools rests.