Via Facilis

In this and the next post or so, I will be writing about the Independent School. These schools have played a major role in the education of America, and originally acted as a foil to the public school system, giving families a choice, albeit a paid one, in their academic pursuits.

The independent school has never been a business in the strict capitalistic scheme of things. Its primary function is not to make money. Its most valuable assets cannot be measured in shares, dividends, or earnings. The independent school is a place where experts in kids exhibit and practice a deep understanding and appreciation of how their charges grow, and have the wisdom to guide them appropriately in what can at times be a very painful process.

At its best, the independent school's business is to prepare the next generations of young men and women to take their place in the world. But how to do that? The true mission of the independent school is to create the environment wherein students learn to harness the boundless power of their minds.

Years ago, I went to boarding school. I played ice hockey. One day, Mr. Farr was coaching us because our coach was away. As we were skating in warm ups, he blew the whistle. As we glided around the rink, his voice boomed out.
"I'm not seeing anybody fall to the ice. Do you know what that tells me? You're not pushing yourselves hard enough. When you fall, you show me that you're going beyond your limit. It's the only way you will get to the next level."

An invaluable life lesson on the ice.

Years ago, an old school friend remarked that we as students and graduates of our school could never truly repay what our school has done and will do for us in our lives and the way we lead them.

How right he was.

But that was a time when the experts, when the masters of teaching and learning, when the people who understood the dynamics of the adolescent mind and how it grows, played the most critical role in the independent school.

That was, as I say, then.

And this is now.

Independent schools raise money in two crucial ways:

1. Tuition
2. Fund Raising

Cardinal Rule #1:
Independent schools always run in the red.

The money independent schols take in - tuition - never exceeds the money that goes to their operation.

(In business terms:
Income never exceeds expenditures -
about as business-minded as I care to get)

(Notice the subtle, but insidious substitution of "income" for "tuition".
This is not merely a monetary shift; it is a philosophical metamorphosis with serious implications for the integrity of the independent school.)

Independent schools are not (and should not be) money-making operations.
(They're tax exempt for a reason.)

Cardinal Rule #2:
Fund Raising must always be employed to close the fiscal gap created from the environment of Cardinal Rule #1.

During the last twenty-five or so years, independent schools and their boards have understandably focused particularly upon getting their institutions financially solvent, and then keeping them that way. Their fears and justification are real: many schools go under precisely because of monetary mismanagement.

"The Lord Will Provide" mentality, when the headmaster or headmistress could focus solely on the task of the shaping of young lives, and the "If you build it, they will come" approach was no longer compelling,

There is sense.
There is sensibility.
And then there is reality.

"The Lord Will Provide" is fine and good. But the people to do the Lord's work - raising money - had to be in place. Else the only thing that "The Lord Will Provide" was disaster.
And then there would be no more independent school.

To save the independent school, a change had to happen.
The power structure shifted.
Find a Fund Raiser.
Find a White Knight.
Find someone who can tap into Alumni treasure troves or create the environment where that would happen as a rule of thumb.

And So It Dawned:

The Age Of The Monetary Administrators