As much as I love all of our schools, I can tell when everyone is rotating through spring break around the country as it’s just a little more peaceful on my end. Questions and concerns shift from time-sensitive crises (usually caused by students) to policy and procedure questions as administrative teams use the downtime to catch up a bit.
Legal Questions: This is the time of the year that the employment compliance and tax questions start coming out. Some of the activity is due to schools renegotiating heads’ contracts and some is related to the hiring season more generally. On hiring, keep an eye out over the next couple of days for our new hiring guide to be posted. It has sample contract letters, checklists, and all of that good stuff in it. Linda Johnson and her team at McLane pulled it together for us.
For those of you in heads’ contract world, I am working on an update to our executive contracts article. This tax guide will help you think through some of the tax ramifications of compensation questions. An interesting question I fielded recently was about the possibility of a school using a 529 college savings plan as an investment vehicle a 457(f) / golden handcuffs arrangement. Good to know you guys are keeping it interesting!
Student Data: As I mentioned last week, this topic is one that I am tracking pretty carefully and we actually have a white paper in the works about it at the moment. However, for those of you dying to dig into student privacy and data use issues rather than the sand at a spring break beach, some of these links might be helpful to you. There is a wide ranging debate on the topic – how should data be used, who should access it, etc. All of these are conversations you should be having in your school. Will you use student assessment data for teacher evaluations? To inform your knowledge of what is happening in the classroom? Individual data or aggregate? Should students and parents have access? Here’s a session from SXSWedu on the topic. For more background on policies, the Department of Education has some good guidelines on the topic. I like this piece from Kickboard on the EdSurge site, too. It has links to the new Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) materials as well. If you want some real life input in how this plays out in schools, check out this piece on student privacy and educational apps from the NYT. This is definitely an evolving area.
Planning for Next Year: Just like many of you, we are working on our budget for next year. This has led to any number of meetings to talk about the projects ahead. Just to tilt my hand a little on next year’s projects… you will definitely see more on working with international students in our schools. I’ll be working with our global team to look at practices for reducing risks but also for ensuring that we are creating healthy environments for our schools and being good stewards of these students who travel so far to be with us.
Sexual well-being is another topic that is on my radar. While higher education continues to grapple with this topic and the fallout, I contend that this is not really a higher education problem, but a k-12 issue as we prepare our students for adult life after they leave our schools. Further, if you asked me to name an issue that will show up on your campus in one way or another over the next couple of years, sexual assault is easily a top three (and don’t get me started about 50 Shades of Grey-related scenarios).
What are you worried about? What other kinds of guidance would you like to see?
New Product! I know that you all have the Affordable Care Act compliance well under control and surely don’t need more guidance. However, for those of you who have had other fish to fry, this new publication written for NAIS by Fisher Phillips lays out a good overview with some common questions answered.
Finally, if you need some extra reading on your saved link pile. I loved this piece from Frank Bruni at the NYT. The admissions world of higher education is too volatile a place for our students to place their self-worth. The Post interviewed Bruni a bit on his new book on the topic, too.