Sometime this week I will get the final report from the survey we have been conducting over the last month. My thanks to all who took the time to respond. The hard part will be determining if the number of responses is statistically significant and then interpreting what, if anything should be done in response.
I have received interim reports each of the last few weeks. It is certainly a joy to read the comments of those defined as "promoters" which outnumbered the "detractors" by about a 20-1 margin. It is nice to know people have good feelings about our school and are willing to voice them. And while it probably is a character flaw, I have spent more time reading the comments of the groups defined as "passives" and "detractors". I want to know if there is something I can do to "fix" the problems some in our constituency identified.
Some can' t be fixed. When one parent writes we give way too much homework and another writes we are not giving enough, that gap is pretty hard to bridge. My focus is more on the quality of the homework we assign and less about it's quantity. Yet I know that is how some folks will measure us. One parent asks that we be at least one year ahead of our public school counterparts and another asks that we have a program for students not headed for college. While those two outcomes may not be mutually exclusive, the obstacles to achieve both at a school our size are significant.
One of the comments that has consistently been voiced over the years (and shows up a few times in this survey) is that the school has become obsessed with money. I am never quite sure what to make of that, but I know I don't like it. When I took the call to Faith one of the attractive things about it was that people had an ambitious vision of what the future could be. There was a master plan that included ball fields, a chapel, gym and a lot of classrooms. Board members told me they were certain that Faith could have over 1000 students, a bold claim when there were just over 400 students in the school and no Lutheran schools in the U.S. with that many students. The work that has been done over the last decade has fulfilled those dreams.
But buildings cost money and here, the cost of building has escalated fairly dramatically over the last decade. It has meant that we have been in a capital campaign almost continually and building something almost every year. It also means costs escalate. Our mortgage gets bigger. Utilities increase. We have to add staff to maintenance and landscaping to support expanded facilities. As the student body has grown we've added teachers, pretty consistently matching a 17-1 ratio. Those teachers work at below "market" rates in an area that has a higher standard of living costs than where most Lutheran schools are located. It has been a priority of our Board to be fair with them.
The perception that money buys you influence at Faith is hard to see from my perspective. I am the one turning away troubled students from prominent families who promise "support" for our latest project if we will give their students an opportunity. One longtime friend of the school has distanced himself because I wouldn't take a enroll a new student whose entrance score was substantially below the cut-off. I wonder to this day if that was a good decision. Students from well-to-do families have been expelled, drug-tested, suspended and disciplined. They also made teams, got into NHS and were leads in the play. Many families who are widely held to be "rich" don't really do much for our school as far as donations. Yet when their kids succeed, make the team or get a reward too many people snipe that their success came from money and influence. That's unfair to those students.
For most of my growing up years my dad was a barber (not a stylist!). He worked 12 hour days cutting hair for $2.00 a head and half of that went to the shop owner. My mom was a factory worker who never made more than $5.25 an hour. The respect I have for families who struggle to meet Faith's rising tuition costs is visceral. We are blessed that God has given our community people with resources. We would not be where we are today without them. But people who think that money drives decision-making about who gets cut, who gets the lead, who gets admitted or who gets disciplined are just wrong.
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3 comments:
The challenge of explaining perceptions is very difficult. The risk that you take is that, by explaining or offering justification, you actually reinforce the perception or perpetuate the perception.
The perception of money focus might be better addressed through transparency related budgeting and board of director reporting. The more information that is provided will generally yield a higher degree of trust in financial and strategic matters. When those decisions are made in the dark, by a group of hand-picked insiders, mis-perceptions will prevail.
It is also tempting to use the "reports are available" line but to be trully transparent, they must be distributed or available in a format that is more user friendly than calling the office.
Two cents from an OD guy.
My sense is that people think we are money obsessed because we run fundraisers or are in a capital campaign and becuase they beleive money has got for their individual child that should have fairly gone to someone else. In ten years I have never had anyone ask me for a copy of the budget and relatively few questions have been raised about how we spend our money.
Board meetings are open, and Board members are not hand-picked, although it may appear that way from the outside. We have little influence over whom the congregations send as their representatives.
Anyway, thanks for reading and writing!
I have to say my husband and I struggle to make the monthly payment for tuition plus all of the extra activities, but it is all worth it. The education that my son has received thus far has been far better than what we could have expected. It has been a blessing that he has been surrounded by Christ centered teaching and teachers!
We have never felt that the "rich" kids are given any advantage over those that are not considered rich. I may be naive but I feel that each student is taken on his or her merits whether that be for the lead in the play, the quarterback, or just getting accepted to the school.
Money is an issue for everyone right now. I expect that Faith will continue to offer the very best for each dollar!
Keep up the good work!
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