Your School Is Growing. Is Your Board?

Something significant is happening in American education. Families are moving — away from traditional public schools and toward independent, charter, classical, home, and faith-based alternatives. Charter school enrollment has grown by nearly 500,000 students since 2019, a 15 percent increase, while district public schools have lost close to two million students over the same period. Independent schools now serve more than one million students nationally, more than double the number from just five years ago. In schools like yours, 69 percent of enrollment gains are attributed to something as straightforward as values alignment, or what we sometimes refer to as the value proposition. Parents aren’t just looking for a better academic experience. They’re looking for a school that stands for something, a feeling that connects them to the mission.

That’s good news — and it’s exciting. Because a school that grows quickly without governance that can keep pace is a school that has introduced new risk under the banner of success. I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to count. Enrollment surges. The head of school is stretched in too many directions. The board celebrates the numbers and assumes everything
must be working. And the governance infrastructure that will determine the school's next
decade quietly starts to unravel.

If your school is in a season of growth, or if it is a part of the school’s vision, here are three
factors to seriously consider.

1. Does your board understand that it is the single largest contributor to your school’s growth — or its decline?

Most heads of school would say their board is supportive. What I find, when I sit down with boards and ask harder questions, is that support is often passive, not purposeful. Board members show up, approve the budget, and cheer for the school. What role do they play in a crisis? What happens to trust and unity? What they don’t always do is function as a genuinely unified team — advocating for the school in their communities, holding firm on mission when the pressure mounts, providing the consistent and intentional support that makes sustained leadership possible. Support is not the same as unity. And unity is what effective governance requires.

There is a direct, provable correlation between the health of a governing board and the enrollment trajectory of the school it oversees. When a school grew by 25 percent in a single year — a remarkable result — the analysis of what drove that growth pointed not primarily to the marketing team or the curriculum or the facilities. It pointed to an exceptionally healthy board. The board worked as a team, had a shared vision of who they were and who they wanted to become. It supported the head without interference. That created the conditions and culture for everything else to work.

If your board doesn’t know its own mission statement word for word or unable to articulate it in their own words then the work of the board has already become disconnected from the mission it exists to protect and promote.

2. Are you recruiting board members, or are you filling seats?

Growth environments put enormous pressure on the trustee recruitment process, and that pressure usually produces shortcuts. Someone has a friend who runs a successful business. There’s a parent who is enthusiastic and well-connected. The board needs bodies, and these people are available. So, they’re asked — sometimes casually, sometimes in a setting that
communicates the wrong level of seriousness about what’s being asked. Genuine expectations were not discussed. There is an absence of role clarity.

The recruitment process is where board culture is either built or eroded. Every ineffective trustee you bring onto the board was recruited by someone who didn’t ask the right questions, set the right expectations, or conduct the process with the gravity it deserves. The committee on trustees — or governance committee — exists precisely to prevent this. When that committee is active, intentional, and working from a clear matrix of what skills and perspectives the board actually needs, the board gets stronger over time. When it’s passive or nonexistent, the board drifts.

The best thing that can be said to a prospective trustee is also the most honest: This is a serious responsibility. Here is what it requires of you. Here is what we expect. And here is what is at stake for the students and families who have trusted this school with something that matters enormously to them. Are you prepared to accept that?

3. Are your bylaws protecting your mission — or are they just a document no one has read
recently?

Independent and faith-based schools made an intentional choice about who they are. That identity is embedded in the mission statement, reflected in the hiring practices, lived out in the classroom. But mission drift doesn't announce itself. It comes gradually, through small decisions made by well-meaning people who weren't anchored to the founding purpose. And the document that should prevent this — the bylaws — is often outdated, inconsistently applied, or unknown to the very people responsible for upholding it.

Term limits that exist but aren’t enforced. Chair succession language that’s ambiguous. Committee structures that no longer match how the school actually operates. These aren’t administrative footnotes. They are governance failures waiting to become crises. The bylaws define how the board manages itself, resolves conflict, and protects the school when things get hard. A growth environment, with new families, new staff, new trustees, and new pressures, is exactly the moment to make sure those documents are current, clear, and followed.

Are you thriving or merely surviving? The schools that will thrive in this environment aren’t just the ones with the best programs or the sharpest marketing. They’re the ones with governance that’s healthy enough to sustain what growth demands — and honest enough to catch the problems before they become irreversible.

That is where the work begins. Not in the enrollment numbers, not in the marketing campaign, not in the next strategic plan — but in the board room, in the quality of the people seated around that table, and in the clarity with which they understand why they are there. When a board is healthy, a school can do almost anything. When it is not, even the best head of school struggles to lead with confidence.