Virtual & Onsite Consulting Services

Onsite Consulting
Onsite Consulting

Ensure that your school’s governance and operations support your mission.

We work together with your leaders, teachers, staff members, and students to understand your school’s unique needs, strengths, and challenges. We help you create a plan to help you meet your goals.

Your team can then put these mission-appropriate recommendations into action to achieve increased cash reserves, higher enrollment levels, and long-term stability. At the end of the day, we all have a singular purpose—advance school leadership to enrich the student experience.

We offer personalized consultations for many leadership divisions of a private school—the Board of Trustees, School Heads, the Business Office, the Development Office, Enrollment Management professionals, Marketing professionals, and Academic leaders. Select the area of school leadership you’d like to further explore.

 

Our Consulting Services

School Head

Whether you want to ensure that all school functions run at peak efficiency or are considering implementing new strategies and initiatives, lean on a trusted source of knowledge to increase the likelihood of long-term success.

Business & Operations

Take advantage of a full range of planning, facilities, and operations consulting services that give your school a solid footing for the future. Examine where your key operations work well, and where they can use improvement.

Academic Leadership

Your programs set your school apart. Explore how to create and build programs that pull families in and give them an experience they couldn’t have at another private-independent school.

Admission & Enrollment Management

ISM’s data-informed approach pinpoints what attracts families to your school and inspires them to stay. Receive customized solutions based on your school’s unique marketplace stance, challenges, and opportunities.

Fundraising & Development

Learn how to develop successful strategies to engage and bring donors closer to your institution. No matter your school size, history, or pedagogy, explore how to plan, implement, and evaluate your fundraising strategies to realize your full potential.

Marketing Communications

Explore how to share exceptional stories of student learning, engagement, and outcomes, and illustrate how these can become differentiators that distinguish your school from your competitors.

Board of Trustees

The Board must focus its efforts on governing, planning, and financing your school's future, while leaving everyday decisions to competent administrators. To do that successfully, your Board must think, plan, and act strategically.

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See articles for School Heads, Business & Operations, Advancement, Academic Leadership, and Trustees, in addition to Private School News.

Playground Drama: How to Build Resilience Through Conflict Resolution

School Health and Wellness // April 1, 2022

Resilience—the ability of an individual or a community to withstand, to adapt, and to recover quickly from stress and shock—is a dynamic and developmental process that strengthens over time, and is shaped and built by social determinants—including experiences, opportunities, and relationships—that d...

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Four Tips to Be a Holistically Healthy You

School Health and Wellness // March 17, 2022

No matter how hard you try, working toward your health goals almost always proves to be difficult—increasing your chances of giving up. One reason is that your health goals rarely address overall well-being and instead focus on one area, like weight loss or being on social media less.

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The Fundraising Ask: What If Your Prospects Say “No”?

Fundraising // March 17, 2022

You’ve done all your research on a potential donor, found the perfect solicitors, completed a series of relationship-building efforts. Additionally, at the appropriate time, your “closer” made what you all thought was the perfect ask for support. But the answer was an unexpected version of “no”.

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Now That You’ve Hired Great People, Offer Them Great Pre-Onboarding

School Leadership // March 17, 2022

For most schools, the onboarding process typically starts during teacher and staff orientation. Has your school considered the “pre-onboarding” phase of hiring? Research suggests this process engages new hires during the uncertain phase from acceptance until their first day on the job.

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Teacher Turnover Rates Are Increasing—Will Your School Survive?

School Heads // March 4, 2022

Teacher retention and turnover have been conversation topics for decades. Since the 2020 school year, however, teachers are experiencing and adapting to unprecedented instruction methods, in addition to personal and global health concerns. Stress and burnout levels are high in the education profession, raising concerns about increases in teacher turnover and shortages.

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8 Things You Should Know If You’re a New Admission Director

Enrollment Management // February 17, 2022

Are you new to the role of Admission Director at your school? We rounded up several tidbits about what admission leaders should know, based on a question-and-answer session with Mary Yorke Oates, Director of Admission at Charlotte Latin School in North Carolina and leader of The New Admission Director workshop at Summer Institute 2022.

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A Case for Flexible Work Hours: An Educator’s Debate

School Leadership // February 17, 2022

If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that flexibility isn’t “nice” to have, it’s a necessity—especially when it comes to overall well-being. Because of the pandemic, working from home and flexible hours are much more common—maybe even demanded by many of today’s employees.

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How to Use Mindfulness in the Classroom to Support Student Health

School Health and Wellness // February 17, 2022

In recent years, mindfulness in the classroom—sometimes referred to as “contemplative pedagogy”—has gained traction as a way to reduce stress and anxiety in students as well as to improve academic and behavioral outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge our learning systems, with school closures, remote learning, physical distancing guidelines, and other unexpected changes negatively affecting children's mental health. Now more than ever, it is prudent for educators to apply evidence-based strategies that counterbalance the negative emotions that might otherwise thwart student progress.

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How Standardized Tests are Failing Your Students

Academic Leadership // February 1, 2022

With a Scantron test—multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble form scoring system common in standardized testing—and a sharpened No. 2 pencil in hand, what could go wrong for a student ready to demonstrate their knowledge on a standardized test? Quite a few things, according to education experts who believe that exams don’t successfully prove student mastery of a subject.

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