The admissions director (AD) serves as the chief revenue officer of a school, responsible for generating approximately three-quarters of its income, as reported by Prizmah’s Jewish Day School Finance and Operations Dashboard. The AD oversees enrollment management, and that requires tenacious recruitment, relationship building and ensuring that the expectations of families are exceeded.
But consider the barriers to their success: teachers who find tours disruptive, parents who share their unresolved concerns on social media, staff members who don’t understand that they have a role on the admissions team. Even the most skilled AD, who has been trained on leading practices and is masterful at the required skills, will find it difficult to help a school achieve its potential without an effective partnership with the head of school (HOS).
The success of the HOS/AD partnership hinges on three ingredients: alignment, mutual support and honesty.
Be Aligned
Alignment Begins with Trust
Data from multiple meta-analyses show that effective teams require a foundation of trust. Trust is crucial for productive communication, collaboration and productivity, but achieving trust is not always easy. Staff turnover necessitates the rebuilding of trust. Moments of conflict, miscommunication and elevated tension can erode trust. Even in well-established partnerships, trust must be intentionally nurtured.
Nurturing a trusting partnership requires taking the time to understand the other’s ideals, and knowing where these ideals align with one’s own, professionally and institutionally. School leadership teams can begin by sharing with one another answers to these questions:
- What is your purpose? (What moves you personally? Why does your school exist?)
- What do you stand for? (Personally and institutionally)
- What won’t you stand for? (Personally and institutionally)
- What does your school promise families?
The AD and HOS may have different personal motivations, but alignment conversations typically lead to an empathy and understanding of the other’s values. However, it is important that the leadership team is aligned on institutional values, and the goal of these conversations is to build consensus. An excellent resource for achieving alignment is the book The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni.
Only once you’ve established alignment in your vision for the school can you begin working on a shared vision about enrollment.
Aligning Around Whom You Are Meant to Serve
The AD must create and implement a recruitment plan, and that requires a firm understanding of whom the school is meant to serve. If your school’s mission is to serve all Jewish children, it must provide services that support diverse learning styles. Recruiting and then admitting students who will not thrive in your school can lead to teacher burnout, dissatisfied parents, negative publicity and attrition of the students you can serve well.
If you are committed to preserving the Jewish hashkafah of your community, you must be aligned about the families you choose to welcome. Are you willing to turn away a family that is not comfortable with your school’s Jewish practices? How will you address inquiries from non-Jewish families?
And what about parents who cause division in your school or who treat teachers with disrespect? Are you aligned about what behaviors you won’t stand for and whether to retain difficult parents?
Alignment on whom you can serve well and whom you are willing to serve will strengthen your partnership and facilitate decision-making about these issues when they inevitably arise.
Be Supportive
Developing authentic mutual support requires understanding each other’s stresses and perspectives, establishing one another’s leadership and collaboratively de-tangling issues.
The Pressures on the Head of School
One of the head’s trickiest dances is balancing the management of the board of trustees while being its sole employee. Heads are evaluated on their ability to execute the vision of the board. This becomes complicated when board members insist on ideas—such as print advertisements or discounts for new babies—that defy leading practices and offer minimal return on investment.
By maintaining detailed records and providing monthly admissions reports, the AD can illustrate the impact of various ideas. Reports offer transparency to the board, highlighting data on inquiries, tours, applications and demographics, and comparing the data with previous years. The AD’s thorough reports equip the HOS with relevant data and the language to discuss leading practices in admissions.
Some challenges are naturally messy. The HOS navigates numerous difficult conversations daily. Personnel issues can become public with one-sided narratives from unhappy employees. Policy or discipline decisions may meet resistance. The AD, having forged the first relationship with the families, can be a key partner in de-escalating concerns. By listening and reassuring families with statements like, “Our head cannot share all the details, but trust that decisions are made with the best interest of the school and our children in mind,” the AD can mitigate complaints and foster an environment that supports the HOS.
The Pressures on the AD
It is equally important for the HOS to understand the stresses that the AD faces. A typical application is often the result of years of relationship building. The child may have received a school onesie at birth. Your AD has likely made numerous calls and texts, invited the family to events, assigned them to ambassadors, given tours (sometimes multiple tours) and developed a meaningful relationship with the family. The HOS who understands the critical nature of the tour is better positioned to establish a culture among the faculty and staff that ensures a tour will successfully convert an inquiry into an application.
A natural tension exists between the admissions department, intent on filling classrooms, and teachers, who may find tours and recruitment events to be disruptive. Since every employee ultimately reports to the HOS, the HOS has the authority to make ambassadorship not just a school value, but a professional expectation. Only the HOS can require employees to attend at least one recruitment event during the school year. Only the HOS can carve out time during faculty orientation for the AD to explain the admissions process, helping faculty understand that families enroll because of what they see in the classroom. The HOS is best positioned to galvanize teachers and make them part of the team, supporting the school’s mission of providing more students with a Jewish day school childhood.
Establishing Each Other as Leaders
The HOS and the AD can best ensure the success of the team by reinforcing each other’s leadership.
As admissions practices consistently evolve, investing in annual professional growth of the AD is crucial. Prizmah offers communities of practice, numerous workshops and learning opportunities at its biannual conference. Other organizations also offer meaningful opportunities for the AD to gain new skills and ideas that lead to greater success in the admissions office.
The school is the ultimate beneficiary of the AD’s professional growth and elevated visibility in the field. That acquired knowledge impacts not only enrollment but also strategic plans, which should include an admissions component that draws on the AD’s expertise. Similarly, it’s essential that the HOS include the AD in all discussions regarding admissions and enrollment practices, and that decisions about admissions procedures should be led by the AD.
The AD also can play a key role in establishing the HOS’s leadership. After months, sometimes years, of forging relationships with prospective families, the AD must eventually transition those relationships to the HOS and appropriate staff members. Failure to do so can lead to burnout for the AD, who may otherwise remain the contact for questions, concerns or complaints about the school.
This transition can begin during the school tour. The HOS should have a well-prepared shtick to share during each tour, such as, “Are you enjoying your tour? I hope you notice that here, we see school as more than just a place to learn subjects. It’s a childhood.”
Be Honest
If you have trust, alignment and mutual support, you can also cultivate honesty, the third ingredient of an effective partnership. Since you already have established a relationship where you assume good intentions, when disagreements arise, as they inevitably will, it will be leshem Shamayim, “for the sake of heaven,” with the best interests of the school at heart.
Honesty Implies Healthy Discussion and Even Conflict around Ideas
When your ideals are aligned, it is safe to occasionally disagree about ideas, such as whether an event will have the desired impact or whether an investment will yield a meaningful return. Challenging each other’s ideas leads to innovative solutions, new opportunities, refined processes, and personal and institutional growth.
Embracing Discomfort
Growing enrollment requires that the HOS and AD are open to constructive feedback from parents, colleagues, the community and each other.
Parent satisfaction surveys. Understanding the experiences of school families is fundamental to retention efforts. Since families often begin contemplating a school change over winter vacation, surveys should be distributed in early December and evaluated by the HOS and AD during the break. Collaborating to analyze the surveys, identify patterns, address common criticisms and develop family-specific retention plans is crucial to successful reenrollment.
Tangles. It’s easier to comb out a tangle before it becomes a knot. Similarly, addressing parent concerns immediately is far more effective than waiting until they become disgruntled. The HOS must be among the first to know about complaints, even if the complaint concerns them. That requires that the AD have the courage to deliver such news directly and honestly.
Admissions decisions. Despite years of recruitment, there are times when a school is simply not equipped to meet the needs of a child. Similarly, occasionally an admitted student is not making progress with the learning services available and must be coached out. The decision to turn away students whose families have been courted is both unfortunate and uncomfortable, but it is sometimes necessary. The HOS must be honest in helping the AD understand and navigate this decision.
Holding each other accountable. When team members know they will be held to high standards, they are more likely to deliver results. The AD reports to the HOS, and so accountability is inherently part of that relationship. But in some ways, the AD also manages the HOS, guiding them to prioritize actions that impact enrollment. Examples include reminding the HOS to call new families within the first two weeks of school, reaching out to families who expressed on their satisfaction survey a desire to be contacted by an administrator, and preparing remarks for a prospective family event.
Celebrating successes. Recognizing and celebrating achievements, both big and small, boosts morale, motivates and fosters a sense of pride and accomplishment. An application from a long-courted family might evoke a shared “nae nae” dance. A successful event should elicit a “kudos!” email before the day is over. And a surprise cup of coffee the morning after an event says, “I saw you working tirelessly, and now you must be tired!”
Begin Nurturing an Effective Partnership Now
This fall, focus on implementing leading practices for an effective HOS/AD partnership. Consider the steps you will take to confidently answer “yes” to the following:
- The HOS requires teachers to participate in admissions events.
- The HOS has a clear, concise shtick on school tours and is aware in advance of the touring family’s dreams and concerns.
- To assure that admissions processes align with leading practices, the HOS supports ongoing learning, networking and professional development for the AD.
- AD attends board meetings and prepares a monthly report to update the HOS and board on enrollment and admissions efforts.
- AD is part of the leadership team and collaborates on decision-making and strategic planning that impacts recruitment and retention.
- Retention is a high priority, and the HOS creates a culture where every employee understands their role in fulfilling the expectations fostered during the admissions process.
- The AD is included on the agenda for staff week or an upcoming staff meeting.
- The HOS and AD know each other’s favorite coffee drink.
The work of enrollment is sacred. We create a future as we make a Jewish day school childhood a reality for each student. In addition to learning about the science behind admissions practices, we must devote attention, maintenance and artistry to the important partners that lead it: the admissions director and the head of school.
