As you may know, I started this week in Florida, in St. Pete, to be exact—a name that conjures up images of sun, sea, and sand. And it’s true the weather is definitely milder there. For example, the sun is so strong that everyone eats lunch in the shade, which makes you feel like you haven’t flown two and a half hours by plane but rather time traveled 6 months and landed smack bang in the middle of July. But since I was in St. Pete for work, I spent the vast majority of my time in an impersonal conference room (in a few years, I won’t remember the time or the place when I look for my face in the group photo misleadingly taken around the swimming pool).
The theme of the conference was “The New Normal,” or how to lead a school in the face of today’s challenges. This new normal takes on different forms and raises several questions that reminded me of my back-to-school staff speech in 2022, in which I emphasized the importance of focusing on what we can control (at the time, the consequences of the pandemic on learning were still unclear). For instance, we can (and should in order to anticipate) wonder what the effects of President Trump’s second term will be on independent schools, keep a wary eye on demographic trends, or worry about the rise in armed conflicts around the world, but they are all areas beyond our control and for the time being, we can only observe from the sidelines.
Personally, I have always preferred to focus on areas where I know I can make an impact. One of the speakers, a specialist in academic leadership, said that heads of schools are responsible for 12 to 20% of their students’ results (I have no idea how he reached those percentages) but that our most effective actions are indirect–putting processes and protocols in place that everyone understands, recruiting the best teachers, making sure they receive regular training and are distracted as little as possible from their vital role–teaching children. They are the kind of missions I can engage with, reflect on, and discuss with my colleagues so that we can improve what we do!
One thing that we have done well in recent years–and Mireille has been working tirelessly on this–is ensuring the long-term stability of our student numbers. One of the central issues that arose during the conference is that independent schools are threatened by decreasing enrollment (though French schools are not as impacted as smaller, private American schools). The situation is quite the opposite at The École and, at the end of our re-enrollment period, we are optimistic about our goals for the 2025-2026 school year. It was interesting to note that some of the solutions being rolled out by schools facing enrollment crises echo the ones we implemented at The École over the years in order to attract (and keep!) families long-term.
Finally, I came home to Andria on Tuesday evening—she had been at a conference in D.C. where one of the themes was “Better Together – How to Ensure A Effective Head of School & Communications Director Relationship.” Now, there’s a domain where we are hard to beat at The École.