Law and Order: Risk, Relationships, and Real Estate
Several years ago I attended the NAIS People of Color Conference and participated in leaders of color pre-conference workshop. It was one of the most enriching, thought-provoking, and inspiring sessions I had attended at this conference. Led by two heads of color and an assistant head of color, they guided us through several exercises and discussions around leadership traits and the heads role in school leadership. It was all very sobering.
One of the pearls of wisdom was the three Rs of school leadership: risk, relationships, and real estate. One of the heads pared down the day-to-day of her role into these three essential elements. Risk: we spend time managing legal and liability issues that broadly impact the institution. Relationships: we are always cultivating, managing, and seeking out the connections with our constituents, raising money, putting out fires, and strategically working within and outside of our community to build a sustainable future for the school. Real estate: we are always thinking about our facilities in how it relates to our program and the needs of our schools. Either purchasing, maintaining, or changing our schools to evolve with the community and the program.
I could not help but think about this session and these three essential elements of school leadership when we embarked on our class on law and policy, Legal Issues for Independent School Leaders. Led by NAIS President, Debra Wilson and long-time school attorney, Paul O’Neill, having an opportunity not only delve into the law itself, but the real world scenarios and issues that have arisen in our schools was an important reminder of that our at the end of the day, our governance and policy, is some of the most critical in building, maintaining, and sustaining the culture and community of our schools.
Where the morals and ethics of education provide guiding principles of behavior, the law defines in practice and detail the boundaries of that behavior in a broader national perspective. Exploring various types of law, it was particularly interesting to consider the expectations of individuals in comparison to what rights the school has.
Paul and Debra put together a series of podcasts for the class. The discussion format was a great entree into the complex and heady world of legal issues that affect schools. In their opening podcast, Paul lays out the following guiding questions for us to consider:
What should the role of government in regulating education be?
What should the role of government be in regulating private school education?
What are the limits of parental choice? What should those limits be?
Are the rules that we establish good for kids? Is pleasing parents a proxy for that?
How does money influence what happens and how we hold schools accountable?
Do the rules achieve the goals we are seeking? Are there unintended and negative consequences that show up?
How should school leaders think as they regulate life on their campuses?
These guiding questions were threaded throughout our course work. As we navigated learning about the law and government itself, we ended on some very relevant topics for us to consider in school leadership. The notion rules (laws) in schools and how they affect, impact, and show up in the life of the school was compelling.
One of our assignments was an open blog or memo leaning into public regulation of private schools, safety and order, harassment or employee rights. At the time, many schools were in discussions about instituting cell phone bans, and while there was an appearance of an ubiquitous embracing of this approach, many, including myself, questioned it. I’ve included it here as a blog post.
In it, I argued that there is a larger societal problem in our relationship with technology and that cell phone bans in schools does not truly address the underlying issues. I urged our schools to embrace a proactive educational effort to explicitly teach our students how to navigate the digital world, rather than put our heads in the sand.
In considering, these two questions:
Are the rules that we establish good for kids? Is pleasing parents a proxy for that? Do the rules achieve the goals we are seeking? Are there unintended and negative consequences that show up?
I wondered if such bans which please parents, teachers, and administrators, are actually not good for kids, and of course the unintended consequences of student well-being not improving or getting worse.
As an aspiring school leader, I am meticulous in my approach and have a desire for the 360 degree analysis on any issue. Are all voices being heard? It is policy decisions like this, and even more important ones, that school leaders must navigate. It is Paul’s last question that lingers for me. How should school leaders think as they regulate life on their campuses?
I am not sure there is one mindset that will dictate how we regulate life at our schools, but I do think that having a grounded perspective on the impact on students, the nuances of power and privilege, and a pulse on the climate of our community is essential. We must govern and guide with empathy and a growth mindset, as well as an institutional duty of care.