As Development Director, you are constantly striving to establish and nurture relationships with your families. Your school wants their support whether it is through the annual fund, a capital campaign, or annual auction. But you also want to keep them a part of your school family after their children leave—much like colleges and universities do. A great way to do that is to learn as much as you can about the family as early as possible. And you can start with the admission process.

As School Head, it’s a good bet that you are not an accountant. Yet, you need to have a handle on what financially is happening with your school. While you have a Business Manager (as most of you do) to handle financial operations, you are still responsible for accurately reporting information to the Board. How comfortable are you with those reports?

ISM believes that the primary job of academic administrators (e.g., Division Heads and Department Chairs) is to coach and mentor faculty toward outstanding performance. The question that this begs is: Who is supposed to coach and mentor the coaches?

Bullying is nothing new to kids, but it has come into sharp focus, with stories of cyberbullying, text threats, and what seems to be the growing number of victim suicides. Schools and school districts are beginning to deal seriously with bullying, and are putting anti-bullying policies into place.

As Division Head, you have Department Heads reporting to you—and their duties could range from selecting text books and doing paperwork to hiring, coaching, and mentoring faculty members. Indeed, the potential responsibilities of a Department Head can range far and wide, and vary by school.

ISM recently published a new teacher evaluation model for private-independent schools. Today’s lead article describes how you can implement this type of an evaluation approach in your school.

As the semester winds down, we know that your schedule ramps up—often without a moment to spare. Following from last month’s practice, we wanted to offer a selection of performance-related quotes and resources culled from recent Twitter and blog postings, to encourage and support you.

Q: I keep reading news items about the “NLRB” and social media policies. Since we’re not unionized, does this affect us in any way?

There’s a new social media giant in the making, and it’s one you might want to consider taking some time to familiarize yourself with—Pinterest. Just what is Pinterest? If you’ve already acquainted yourself with Twitter, then you’re aware of the power of social media and how easy it is to share your school’s events, successes, and news with your followers. If your school has included social media as part of its marketing plan and development practices, then you might also be aware of how profitable social media can be. Just a few minutes a day can go a long way. However, for the visual thinkers out there, Twitter can be visually unpleasing regardless of custom backgrounds and the adoption of Twitpics.

10 Tips for Reusing Plastic Milk Jugs According to the National Geographic documentary Human Footprint, Americans consume about 989,985,594,240 half gallons of milk over the course of a lifetime. Good news—Americans clearly enjoy this healthy beverage. Bad news—waste is a growing issue for all of us.