Introduction
Durham -- You can still see the faintly scribbled words to the Preamble to the Constitution on a chalkboard in what used to be Mr. Infinito's history classroom. But there are no more lessons for his classes at Rtp Christian Academy of Technology, a faith-based secret school in Durham. Too many parents have lost jobs in the recession. The dwindling learner body is forcing the school to shut its doors Tuesday."Everything was going fine. The stepping back is indeed to blame," said Shon Allen, significant and cofounder of the school, which combines Christian teachings with industrialized science classes. "It has been a indeed sad experience." (Latifi, 2009)
Every day we hear about someone else Christian school which is struggling to survive or even closing their doors in the tough cheaper that the country is currently facing. For many Christian schools there have been many sacrifices made and many difficult decisions loom in the distance. Christian schools are closing everyday; is there no relief in sight? I believe that it is time for some radical actions and shifts in our reasoning that will test our faith and refocus our purpose for being in Christian Education. Reconsider the following not merely as suggestions but as a clarion call to change the way that we think about the firm of school. I believe that the following will not only help your school survive these economic times, but it will weighty your school into even greater success in the future:
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Lower tuition
It sounds like a crazy idea, but think it in your mind. Every chair that is empty in any classroom right now on any campus of any Christian school is not manufacture that school money. Every day that empty chair has an earning possible but if it remains empty, that earning possible is not realized. By lowering tuition there are two things that now occur. First, you are manufacture a statement to the community on your campus now and also in your community that you care about them and you recognize their need. Everybody is struggling. Right now in your school and community, habitancy are losing their homes and cars and other possessions are being repossessed, money is being stretched so thin that every sacrifice is manufacture a inequity and yet many are manufacture approximately impossible sacrifices to continue to educate their children in a Christian School because they believe in it, but the decision looms every day, month and indeed from school year to school year either they will be able to continue. By lowering tuition you are recognizing that these decisions are difficult and you are offering relief and a think to stay. Likewise, in a community that is desperate for answers to the ills of the social school system, lowering tuition will encourage those who may think that a Christian School education is financially unattainable. You are positioning yourself to begin to fill the empty chairs in every classroom. Second, you are creating a school environment with more parent buy-in and learner involvement which will act like an epidemic of good-will and help to spread the news of your actions to the surrounding community (Gladwell, 2000/2002).
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Consider this scenario -A Christian School does some uncomplicated demographic research of its current learner body and the surrounding community and based on that research, decides to cut its tuition by 30%. They announce it to their families and immediately they see that habitancy are signing up for next year. Soon others start to come and by the grace of God your enrollment doubles. Now the school may still be facing an issue of not manufacture their budget, but the gap is lessened and now there are more students to help in fundraising efforts, more parent buy-in for the school as far as help around campus and more of a community feel for those who are attending. Not all things is financial. The reality is that your school feels victorious and that is going to help in the long run for you to originate a more financially gain environment. Comprehend that if you can survive that year, the next year will only add more profit to the bottom line because if tuition remains low, habitancy will stay, more will come, and the bottom line becomes more secure.
Think about the airline industry, on any airline, there is a set price per seat for any given flight, but not Everybody pays that price for their single seat. Factors of when the label is bought, purchasing online, no additions or changes, all can add to the value or expense to the buyer in the end. The internet is filled with tour site like Orbitz, and Priceline that offer competitive pricing and packaging for those who can plan their trip according to a relatively small numbers of factors. So when you fly on a plane and you are paying full price, you were not able to meet those parameters. When you consolidate this kind of reality with the idea that daily that a seat in a classroom, (like an empty seat on an airplane) is empty is taking money from your bottom line, you can now see the benefit and the power of utilizing a pricing model that accounts for separate sets of parameters, packaging, financial sliding scales, etc. Remember, the monies that are spent on education are discretionary and so there is a greater pressure added to those funds in light of a worsening economy.
Redefine Financial Aid
Financial aid has come to be such a difficult branch to broach for most Christian Schools. Many times a scholarship fund has been established and there is never sufficient money for the school to indeed make that big of a inequity to their bottom line. However, what if financial aid could be redefined and understood in a separate light? building on the idea of "filling the chairs," what if our goal was to redefine financial aid to mean that tuition could be based on other mitigating factors for each private family. For instance, what if Christ the King Christian School lowered its tuition by 20% and retooled its financial aid policies so that a sliding scale for tuition was enacted so that families could take benefit of their current position financially. What if you plainly negotiated with each private family for that they could pay? In the state of Florida, there are vouchers that are offered for low wage families, what if the Christian school appropriate those monies as the tuition for those students? I Comprehend that not every state will have such a program, but what is ready for the families in your community? How can you leverage these opportunities for more students to attend your school? Let's go back to our illustration above. A school has cut their tuition in half and doubled the enrollment, but there are chairs left. Why not fill those chairs with anything monies you can make ready to your budget? Think of a rack rate on a hotel room, a price is out there that could be charged fro that room, but few are ever charged that amount. Likewise, tuition needs to be redefined in a broader mixture of terms than plainly a funds amount divided by amount of students.
The reality here is that there is no risk in accepting more money, there is a great risk in not receiving any more money. I have presented this scenario before to close friends of mine who are in struggling schools and many of them are implicated that they will fill a chair for less tuition and miss out on an occasion to fill that same chair will full tuition. Airlines don't worry about these discounted seats, and why should Christian Schools. If a seat is empty fill it and make the money. Here is my challenge to you - count your chairs. Right now, today, walk around to every classroom and count the chairs that are empty in each classroom and then do a uncomplicated tally on what kind of wage would be realized by having allowed the students that interviewed for your school but did not come due to finances to have been paying you even the smallest of amounts (like 0 a month).Friends, we are not in a time of financial fancy anymore, the world has changed and our survival will come from doing something separate not from remaining the same.
Redefine Fundraising
Fundraising campaigns have come to be anathema for Christian schools. So many times to make up the inequity economically, there are fundraisers that ping the same families over and over again trying to make up the inequity in a failing budget. One woman whose children attend a important Christian school in the area recently made a criticism to me. She said, "If I could afford to spend more money, then I could afford a greater tuition." Wow, well said. So we have to redefine fundraising and I believe that this is done in two crucial ways. First, we need to understand that our many fundraiser will come by filling the seats that are empty. I know that this sounds like the last section, but it cannot be over emphasized that every empty seat is costing your school a significant amount of money that can be recouped and it is not necessarily the amount of the tuition. Say that I work for a school that currently has 100 enrolled with the possibility of taking in an added 50 students without adding any added personnel or significant overhead. Think of it, again like an airline, it costs the same to fly from Miami to Los Angeles regardless of the plane is full or only half-full. By filling those empty chairs with just 00 a learner we stand to Gain 0,000 not only to the top line but to the bottom Line of the funds - -it is all profit because our expenses will not significantly change. Now which of us could raise 0,000 in fundraising, especially with 100 students? It just makes sense to apply the resources that you have ready in this manner.
Second, if you settle to do fundraising then you need to focus on doing fewer campaigns that will make a large margin of wage for a definite purpose. Gumball fundraisers for normal expenses will not be as productive as a walk-a-thon for a gym. Your events need to be extremely purposed well organized, well executed and lean. Then, there is a need to yield immediate results for those who gave. Send pictures of new mulch and swing-sets in the next month's newsletters. You have to produce your credibility in these kinds of campaigns if you are going to be victorious year after year and strengthen your programming.
Increase Image Building, not Advertising
What is your market role? - are you the technological leader (for a school you would be the schoraly leader but you do not adapt to those that are not able to perform at that schoraly level), or are you the assistance king (for a school you would be the school that is not academically the leader but your school meets the needs of the private learner with excellence and caters significantly to the students needs), or are you the operational excellence leader (the cheapest school, nickels and dimes for extras, and you give only basic assistance and is not the schoraly leader). Choosing upon one of these roles is how you begin to build your image in the community because the image building components are already built into the fabric of who you are as an institution.Consider your educational premise like a consulting firm and Reconsider it from a marketing standpoint - We are consultants for those families that have students that would be lost in a hopeless educational principles that teaches them to think in ways that are contrary to our beliefs. It is a principles where students are herded through and unsafe. It is a principles that cares more about their bottom line than the spirit of the child. It is a principles that ______ (you fill in the blank.) What are we doing to market these shortcomings and how we are indeed the experts in remediating against a broken system? We need to build an image in our community that includes excellence, stability, safety, and awareness of what is needed for the success of young habitancy that will be transitioning into the work force. These are your news sales strategies. Use these strategies even if you put an ad in the paper or a industrial on television. You have to market your expertise, not how you are like Everybody else.
How is this kind of image building accomplished? Great news - it is not expensive, but it takes time dedicated to it for success to be realized. Reconsider the following as phase one of any good image building campaign:
· originate or revise your website to be The calling card for not only the excellence of your institution, but as the best reference for your expertise and knowledge. Take a look at some indeed well industrialized websites for great consulting associates (http://www.libertybuilding.com is a great one as a start) and consideration how they are well organized and Full of facts that is pertinent to their area of expertise. Model your school website after these. You must start to think differently. · Use social networking to join together with your families and their network of friends. Set up a page for your school on all the assorted networks and use Ping.fm to post on all of them at the same time. Use them to talk about why Christian education is a good decision. Point out issues in the news about the social school principles (Headline - 5 children injured in school shooting - this is a great occasion for you to image build towards the families that are worried about the security of their children - and they should be). Use it as a platform to talk about what the school is doing and post artwork, flyers and events to keep connected to the network. It works, but it takes being dedicated to it. · release articles in your local newspapers and tabloids about issues surrounding schooling. If you can release in educational journals, then blast your publishing successes all over the social networks. You are going to have to "toot" your own horn a little, but habitancy are going to pay concentration to expertise especially when something goes wrong in the social setting.
· come to be a blogger - set one up and use it in conjunction with your website. You have to come to be a learner of how to drive traffic to your website (this is called search motor Optimization or Seo). Set up e-mail lists by determining who in your community needs to know about what you offer but do not know that you exist, or that it is affordable and send out high ability e-mail newsletters. Blanket the media and other area outlets with the news of your successes and expertise, not just upcoming events. The community will care more about what you have succeeded in and they are the habitancy you want to come across your door because they are not currently enrolled. · Hire an covering counselor to help you produce this kind of initiative. It is not very costly and there are many who would be glad to help out a local school with their expertise. You can go it alone and find success, but with a small amount of money and microscopic expertise, you can indeed see the results more quickly.
Think Creatively About Everything
I work with a local Christian school that has entered a partnership with some local businesses that write grants for work and research performed in a pro setting for its high school students. The students research and yield deliverables for the businesses and train as a part of their education and in return for these research and amelioration efforts, the associates give the school a grant to fund the program. This has virtually eliminated the need for tuition at the high school level. This is an example of some extremely creative reasoning that has created an environment where finances are no longer an issue. I have known of schools that appropriate international students arrival to the United States to study single subjects or participate in sports training and have a need to continue their education and the school entered into a relationship with these students and appropriate them as students with tuition that reflect their international status (in some cases it is duplicate the quarterly tuition) and then used the extra tuition costs to scholarship students who could not afford to come; very creative. It is time for us to wake up and use our creativity as an asset that will help set us apart (Marx, 2006).
Final Thoughts So let's get this down to earth about all of this. These theories will seem to be "pie in the sky" for some and maybe earth changing for others. However, there are those who are reading this narrative and are still on the fence. So to conclude, let me offer you these points to ponder. Why did your church start a Christian School? Think it through thoroughly. For most, the idea for a Christian school was birthed from a love of your community and a desire to offer a biblically based education and ultimately the hope was to win families for Christ and ensue the Great Commission of creating disciples. At the very heart of your school is a desire to love and clergyman to others, and I am exhorting you to go back to that place as you Reconsider the future. It plainly is not right to allow the lack of finances to class habitancy out who are passionate about Christian Education. Yet this is the very scenario that we are facing. Remember, 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, of love and of a sound mind. Do not allow the financial accident we are facing to stifle your creativity - it is at the very heart of how we were created; in the image of a fully creative God who has given us the ability to hear from Him and step out of the boat and walk on the water. We just have to be willing to face the fear of getting wet in the face and put faith in the God that called us to start the school in the first place. reasoning differently will be the key that will make the inequity between suffocating and surviving, surviving and thriving, victorious and innovating. It will be the innovators that will all the time survive every difficult moment, for they will settle what direction to tour regardless of what has defined the successes of the past. The successes of the hereafter will all the time be full of risk and bonus for those who are willing to hold on to the truths that never change and change the methods that have been used to get the truth to those that are in desperate need of the gift that only God offers. This needs to be our motivation and then God can truly bless us and in the end say to us, "Well done."
(c) 2010 Oak Brook Productions, Eustis, Florida - All possession Reserved References
Cashman, K. (1998). Leadership from the inside out: Becoming a leader for life. Minneapolis, Mn: Tclc, Llc LeaderSource.
Gladwell, M. (2002). Tipping Point: How microscopic things can make a big difference. New York: Back Bay Books. (Original work published 2000)
Latifi, S. (2009, November 21). Rtp Christian school closing. The News & Observer Publishing Company. Retrieved December 12, 2009, from http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/203319.html
Marx, G. (2006). Future-focused leadership: preparation schools, students, and communities for tomorrow's realities. Alexandria, Va: relationship for management and Curriculum Development.
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