What Teachers Do
A Board's Eye View
Public Blog for the Board of Trustees of the Kimberton Waldorf School
Focus
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully."
-Steve Jobs
Demographic and Economic Challenges Faced By Independent Schools
This slide deck is an excellent overview of the headwinds that Independent Schools are facing nationwide. This was presented by Dr. Marc Frankel to an ADVIS meeting in April. It is very sobering and thought provoking.
We need to incorporate some of these realities into our strategic planning here at KWS.
In Memory of Lynn DeMont
I have been meaning to post something on the untimely passing of Lynn. 13 years long years ago she was our first introduction into KWS and the Waldorf way. Both Aaron and Jonathan were in Lynn's magical kindergarten class and she ushered us in to this school in her own quiet, strong, committed and confident way.
I remember how she immediately understood Aaron and what he needed at that time. We had just moved to this area and Aaron felt totally uprooted from friends and familiar places. He was much more affected by this move than we had expected and the way that he coped was to keep his distance from "the group". I think he spent most of the first few months in class standing nearly by himself. Lynn's innate understanding and nurturing soul gave Aaron the space and time he needed to be come acclimated to his new world. I think that her gentle approach greatly helped Aaron and we have been forever grateful to her for this gift.
We went to Lynn's funeral at Rose Hall on Saturday. There was a wonderfully large turnout - the space was filled. The service was filled with beautiful music, a touching re-telling of the significant milestones in her life and a warm feeling that this is the way we should be honoring Lynn.
For those of you who could not attend the funeral, I thought I would reproduce a passage that was in the booklet that was handed out at the funeral. It seems "so Lynn".
MESSENGER
My Work is Loving the World.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my Work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all of the ingredients are here.
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we will live forever.
-Mary Oliver
Good teachers are like sculptors. They subtract to reveal what is already there.
I have always thought that the very best Sensei are the ones who view themselves more as sculptors than as, say, painters. A painter may add and add for the most part until he gets it right. A sculptor unveils what was hidden. My best teachers were the ones who connected with me, who cared about me, and brought out the best that was within me. Those are the teachers I remember the most.
Morning argument
This isn't as directly Board-related, but I wanted to share it anyway, because I feel it's a measure of how we're doing.
My youngest, like many children in coal-powered Pennsylvania, has asthma. There's been some illness going around recently, and sometimes all it takes is a little head cold to trigger an attack. Last night, he woke up in the middle of the night coughing, sweaty and whimpering. We prepared and started a nebulizer treatment, and he slipped his finger into the pulse-ox held before him, which measures his blood oxygen levels. His reading wasn't great, but improved as the treatment opened things back up and settled down his cough. Looked like we wouldn't need a trip to the emergency room, thankfully.
We finished the treatment, got him back to bed, and hoped it'd be a quiet rest of the night. In the morning, he certainly wasn't 100%, but he was looking and acting a lot better, even with a bit of cough still present. Which gets us to the point of this post. When our second grader was told that he would need to stay home from school today, he threw a fit. He whined, cajoled, threatened, and otherwise spent 45 minutes being a complete nuisance, trying to convince us to send him to school on a cold, damp day, one that certainly wouldn't help his asthma in the least. Once I drove off to take our 8th grader to school, he realized that he'd lost the battle, he accepted defeat, and was fine. By the time I got back, you'd never have known there'd been a fight at all.
But that fight was a gift: there's no questioning that our son loves going to school at Kimberton.
2010 Audit: This is what a sustainable school looks like.
I have waited until the new year to write this post. New Year, Good News, New Vibe - it all seemed to fit.
Our 2010 audit shows an increase in Net Assets of over $500,000! This is the report that I have been waiting to see that shows that we truly understand what it means to manage our finances. After years of draining our assets by hundreds of thousands, and sometimes over a million dollars per year, we have not only stopped the bleeding but reversed the course of the river of red ink.
The encouraging thing about this net asset increase is that it is totally attributable to Operations. In other words, there was not an extraordinary event, like the sale of some land, which contributed to this. This reflects the mature, professional and inspired management of the school on a day-to-day basis. So what did we do to make this happen? I believe this is a result of the following activities:
1. Increased enrollment over the budgeted expectation. As we have said many times, increasing enrollment is the tide that lifts the boat. By taking a conservative approach to our budget expectations, and then working hard to beat those expectations with actual enrolled students we can generate additional tuition revenue. While most other independent schools in the region have experienced a drop in enrollment KWS stands alone as having increased our enrollment last year. The goal of getting to full enrollment at KWS should "Job 1" for everyone involved in the school. I can't stress enough how important this is, and how profound the positive financial impacts are for achieving this.
2. Booking multi-year pledges as a result of the Circle of Light event. Last year was our first "Ask Event" generated from the work the Development team has been doing with the Benevon Program. This work, which begins with the bi-weekly Waldorf Works program and culminates in the Circle of Light event has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in pledges for donations. While these pledges are IOUs and not in-year cash, they are counted as an Asset and are a strong contributor to our balance sheet growth. I look forward to this pledge asset growing in subsequent years.
Kudos go to everyone involved in this positive story:
- The Governing Team - for their inspirational leadership.
- The Development Team - for their creativity in generating pledged contributions
- The Admissions Team - for their focus on growing enrollment.
- The Faculty and Staff - for their commitment to managing expenses.
- And to the whole KWS Community for the support, good will and positive energy that is evident everywhere I look.
So this is what a sustainable school looks like: Growing enrollment, Expanding Balance Sheet, Positive Energy. Let's keep this up and make 2011 even better.
Michael Liss
For the Board of Trustees.
Agenda for Board Meeting of Weds, 12/15
Here's this month's board agenda. Sorry it is so late, there were many last minute changes.
