Schools Are A Business #savmp

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately and throughout my administrative career have heard different viewpoints of course. On the surface schools are not a business, I agree. However, I feel school leaders should run their campuses with a business savvy mind and thought process.

Schools are in the business of kids!

- Kids are the bottom line
- Kids are our profit
- Kids are our stock quote
- Classrooms are the pulse of your school
- Parent involvement is your customer satisfaction survey
- Behavior referrals are the gauge for student engagement in classrooms

How can/why leaders have this mindset?

- Businesses (especially start-ups) tend to have open conversations/discussions that can change their path on a weekly basis. Schools should adapt this type of thinking, change is constant and being slow to change makes it that much harder to do so.
- Utilize Donors Choose as a way to crowdsource funding for classrooms. Don't just write a grant and let it sit, share share share through social media to garner community funding support! At John Swett Elementary we've had almost $70,000 in grants funded in just over two years, thanks to Twitter for helping with our outreach!
- Reach out to the companies you use to run your school. We've built great relationships with Remind, Voxer, Google and Donors Choose. Talking with employees from outside of the education space opens my mind to different ideas and how to run our school. Educators can learn a ton from non-educators, adapt those practices for your school.

- How do you run your school like a business, would love to hear ideas!

It's all about the kids, they are our business!