Schools

COVID-19: Control What You Can

August 28, 2020

For almost five decades, Meitler has helped schools, parishes and dioceses construct long-term, comprehensive strategic plans. By gathering relevant statistical data and immersing its consultants into the client’s local situation and culture, Meitler was able to guide the client in identifying and prioritizing important and timely issues and creating a game plan to address those issues. The world-wide COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every part of our lives, both personal and work related, so it is no surprise that the core work Meitler has so successfully performed for so many years has also been affected. Like many businesses, we have reevaluated our primary function of comprehensive long-term planning.

How does one create a 5-year plan for an elementary or secondary school when no one is certain about what will happen in the next few months, or weeks? What baseline data should one use to determine future trends? Frankly, what relevance does the past have to our future?

While there are some exceptions, especially at the diocesan level, Meitler is hesitant to encourage long-term comprehensive planning until the world situation becomes more stable and life starts to return to normal, even if that is a new normal. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas that would greatly benefit from a data-based strategy. In fact, those already weakened schools that sit on the sidelines and wait for the COVID crisis to subside might very well find themselves in a fatal spiral while those who engaged in activities to maintain sustainability will probably emerge, as strong or stronger than before and with an eye toward growth. As such, Meitler has re-tooled and pivoted to focus on short term goals and help schools address specific areas and relevant activities.

Enrollment Management

Schools are all over the place in terms of enrollment. Some have lost students to home school options, while others have increased enrollment from last year because they offer something parents want, whether that be in-person instruction or a more personalized environment. Still other schools are facing swings in numbers as parents change their minds about what they are most comfortable with for their child. An enrollment management plan is not just about recruiting students, but equally focused on retaining students. Especially for those schools that are seeing an increase in enrollment, will those students remain after the worst of the crisis is over? If your school offers in-person instruction, some parents might transfer their child out of a 100% virtual school and into your school. What happens, however, when that virtual school reopens to in-person instruction? How can you engage that student and family with your school culture so they become your student?

The comfort level of parents in this time of uncertainty must also be addressed. How transparent is the school with plans, activities and COVID-19 details such as infections, sanitizing, etc.? How is the school administration communicating with parents – newsletters, emails, Zoom meetings, etc.? How are the teachers modeling the personalized approach we promote? Meitler can help you identify issues specific to your school and its demographics and create an action plan to stabilize or possibly even grow your enrollment.

Institutional Advancement

Like enrollment management, institutional advancement is about more than just fundraising. Areas that need specific attention include marketing, communication strategies and donor cultivation. If a school does not tell its story, focusing on those elements that make it attractive, other people will fill that void and make up the details. Depending upon how they feel about your school, those details will be helpful or damaging. As every teacher knows, it is much harder to unteach false information than teach to a blank slate.

While this crisis has affected a large segment of our population, it has not affected everyone equally. There are many people for whom the crisis is a news story. They have not been personally affected except to be inconvenienced. Many of them are wealthy enough to be philanthropic and they care about how society emerges from this pandemic. There is an opportunity to identify and cultivate new and enthusiastic donors to your school’s mission. How to find them and how to share your story and mission with them requires research and planning, the thing Meitler does best.

Academics

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, much was said and published about the need for schools to update their curriculum to be compatible with next generation workplace skills. For most schools, however, it was just talk – something to think about, someday. Teachers were very comfortable standing in front of their classrooms while students continued to learn as they had for generations before. Technology in many schools was still considered a fad or, worse, a distraction. Lip service was paid when schools proudly announced their 1:1 laptop program then used those powerful machines for word processing and internet searches. COVID-19 has changed all that! The power and possibilities of technology are now in front of all of us. At the most basic level, there is no excuse going forward for a school to ever have a snow day again. At a more transformative level, remote learning has shown its effectiveness, most often seen in Catholic schools. Even if children gather again someday in a school building, access to people and places far from that building are available. There are now various options for interactions between a teacher and a student.

In a very few years, there will be those schools that revert back to the learning model designed in the 1890s and other schools that redesign themselves to focus on personalized learning, problem-based curricula and competency-based assessment. The redesigned schools will not go through this transformation because of a theory or a fad, but because they recognize the new, post COVID-19 reality. School can be more than it has been in the past. But even with this new sense of reality, it won’t just happen. Teachers, parents and administrators need to work together to harness the potential unleashed by this crisis. Best practices need to be researched and professional development for teachers needs to be established. The whole concept is overwhelming and calls out for a strategic approach. A plan.

As stated above, we are not living in normal times. The typical approach to long-term, comprehensive planning does not fit today’s situation. But that doesn’t mean planning is impossible or irrelevant. Now is the time to initiate planning in specific areas, areas that will help your school emerge from this confusing and unpredictable time with a clear path toward sustainability and growth. Let Meitler help you create that plan and find that path.

Rick Pendergast

Teaching and Learning in a VUCA World

July 20, 2020

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic."

-Peter Drucker

Our Catholic schools, along with all schools, are working to adapt in a changing world over which they have less and less control. Much of our current situation as a result of the pandemic is uncharted territory and we are learning as we go. From a planning point of view, how we planned many things before in “strategically” looking to our future may not be what is needed looking forward. We need to seriously look at a way to think and act that moves us from our current world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, or a VUCA world, to something different that help us make sense of and plan more effectively for the future of our schools.

VUCA in planning is not a new concept. It evolved from the U.S. military in response to various operational and combat situations. It is a way to address and work with change and events we cannot fully understand or control.

Volatility is dealing with unstable changes that are hard to predict and can shift unpredictably and without warning. It challenges us to match the resources we know and have to unknown risks. Uncertainty reflects our inability to predict or even know everything. The likelihood of surprise events increases and we are less able to predict new outcomes based on previous experiences or patterns of response. Complexity involves multiple factors in play at one time, the sheer number of which causes confusion, uncertainty of what to do, where we are going and how to get there. Often we know the need(s), but we don’t know where to go – what steps need to be taken, what resources are needed, what are the potential outcomes. There are multiple decision factors that need to be addressed, but in what order and how. Ambiguity is the lack of clarity, the potential for misreading situations or challenges and the difficulty of distinguishing threats from opportunities. The ambiguous events and outcomes we face defy description at times. Interestingly, in such a situation there may be no “right” answer.

The issue is how to navigate in the VUCA world in which we find ourselves today. Using the same acronym, VUCA, planning takes on a different approach – moving from volatility to Vision, from uncertainty to Understanding, from complexity to Clarity, and from ambiguity to Agility or Adaptability.

Vision is what we do, the right direction based on focused people making informed choices, communicating constantly and maintaining a strategic, long-term perspective. Understanding is the empathy to feel people’s fears, desires, and hope, keeping an open mind to be curious, explore options, be reflective, know what people want and need and challenge the status quo. Clarity helps simplify the events around us, using our intuition, trusting our gut and experience to cut through complexity one step at a time. Adaptability or Agility leads us to decisiveness, adapting quickly with confidence and the willingness to try something new if our first shot doesn’t work. Key elements of adaptability include innovate or die – learning from the mistakes and seeking a better way, and empowerment – valuing networks and subsidiarity, engaging a broad reach of stakeholders and leaders. It is setting people free to do great work.

We see and read daily the many plans (A, B, C, D and beyond) that are being developed in order to continue providing quality Catholic education in pandemic world. We are heartened and continue to pray for the success of these plans. Here at Meitler we are adapting to plan differently in this VUCA world to support, assist, and empower Catholic schools to move with confidence to perhaps a newer vision, greater understanding, more clarity and the ability to be agile and adapt.

Tom J. Heding

Meitler Minute

July 14, 2020

Across the country, Catholic Schools have outshined public schools in the innovation and quality of education they provide during this pandemic. We can help make sure your school is in position to continue offering the quality education that you always have.

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Altering the Status Quo: High School Alert

July 8, 2020

Amid the ongoing pandemic and the many unknowns for the 2020-21 school year, Catholic schools are facing a significant, though familiar challenge – enrollment. Predictions of 100 or more closures by the start of the next school year are becoming a reality as we hear of the loss of three, five or ten schools in a week. And those schools that remain open face enrollment challenges. In conversations with superintendents and school administrators in the past few months, we at Meitler are hearing of planned budget reductions to accommodate between 10% to 20% fewer students from last year. But this reduction in primarily Catholic elementary schools is not a new problem: “98 schools closed before the start of the 2019-2020 school year; 93 in 2019, 110 in 2018, 86 in 2016 and 88 in 2015.” (America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture online/Catholic News Service; 6/23/20) Catholic high schools need to recognize that their traditional feeder system is in trouble and needs to be reorganized.

In response to this enrollment challenge we see and read a plethora of articles, briefs and how-to advice about marketing, recruitment and retention in a “new normal” for 2020-21. We hear about sharing our value proposition in a more emphatic fashion, highlighting the great transition to remote online learning our schools were able to achieve during the second semester and sharing plans to safely reopen school buildings. These initiatives are appropriate, but they are only a short-term response to the concern parents have sending their children back to the classroom and the impact of unemployment or reduced wages on a family’s ability to afford tuition. The long-term reality is that we have to look to different ways for Catholic high schools to be sustainable.

Many of our high schools are dependent on the enrollment strength of Catholic elementary schools. A diminishing and smaller feeder school base, however, means the high schools must look to a more reliable source of students in order to build enrollment in all grades. As more Catholic feeder schools are merged, consolidated or closed, the high schools have started to reach into the private and public school world for students. Unfortunately, high school administrators tell us that often these students are not as well-prepared as those coming from their traditional Catholic feeder schools. With fewer Catholic elementary schools to provide high school students and the uncertain quality of education found in alternative feeder schools, some high schools have implemented a different model – the “Middle/High School,” with grades 6-12 or 7-12.

High schools are finding numerous benefits in this model. The expansion of grade levels provides the opportunity to prepare students for high school through a well-articulated and aligned middle/high school curriculum. This also creates a middle school experience with enhanced opportunities for advanced courses, counseling and student support services and a broader range of co-curricular activities.

There are other advantages as well. In some areas, parents are looking for a more stable middle school experience than the local public school system provides. The free public elementary experience was sufficient in the primary grades, but now the value proposition of a disciplined and value-focused middle school justifies tuition payments. In addition, many Catholic elementary schools experience enrollment declines in the middle school grades. Creating a plan in partnership with the current Catholic elementary schools could assist them in balancing their budget by focusing on fully enrolled grades. Maintaining sensitivity and a collaborative spirit with local Catholic elementary schools during the planning stages is imperative.

At a time when Catholic high schools need a new vision and possibly a different path for sustainability and vitality, some high schools, like Pope John Paul II High School in Hendersonville, Tennessee are taking a look at this model to stay relevant for the future, following on the experiences of Catholic high schools like La Reina Middle and High School in Thousand Oaks, California, Benilde St. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park, Minnesota and Pope John XXIII in Sparta, New Jersey.

Tom J. Heding

From Adapt to Adopt – Moving Through the Health Crisis (Part 2)

May 22, 2020

I recently heard someone say “Never do planning during a crisis.” Granted, everyone needs some time to react to the immediacy of a crisis, determine if we fight or flee, and try to understand what is taking place. But then we have to start adapting, especially when we realize the crisis is here to stay for longer than we thought or want and may not get better for the foreseeable future.

After almost three months into the present health crisis, our Catholic schools have made incredible adaptations to sustain their mission and continue providing quality education for their students. Everything is moving at what seems light speed and we are learning a lot of lessons through it all – how to organize a totally remote learning system in a matter of days (perhaps hours!), pondering and researching options for reopening schools that will be very different in a few months, adjusting for potential changes to enrollment and funding, and constantly asking ourselves, “What’s next!” We are learning to pivot, flatten our curves, look for a “new normal,” and swivel to something new, while keeping some of the familiar in our schools and lives.

In pivoting or swiveling from adaptations to the adoption of enhanced or very different ways of sustaining quality Catholic education in our schools, we need to be planning and talking about a new vision for a different world in our Catholic schools. It is time to reflect on what we did best in our schools and classrooms before the pandemic, what worked well, what may have been so-so, and of course, honestly admitting to “let’s not do that anymore!” In considering what folks are calling a “new normal” we need to see if our best practices still have merit and vitality, what we can retool, adjust and enhance to make it better in a new fashion, and make our schools even better, stronger, and far more sustainable.

Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist nun reflects, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” Evidently, we still have much to learn in our world as this current crisis continues. While we are working to conquer online teaching and learning, sustaining our teacher-student and school-family relationships via Zoom, trying to decide what our schools and “classrooms” (real or virtual) will look like, and making almost weekly adaptations, it is with all due respect that I say we need to do some serious planning beyond adaptations and create a new vision to determine our own “what’s next” for Catholic education.

Tom J. Heding

Schools

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic."

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