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The Net Assets podcast delves into the most pressing issues in independent school business and operations. Delivered by NBOA, the only national nonprofit membership association focused exclusively on fostering financial and operational excellence among independent PK-12 schools, each episode is based on a popular article in NBOA’s Net Assets magazine. Chief financial and operational officers alongside other leaders of school business share what inspires and challenges them as well as their approaches to problem solving and innovation. In each lively exchange, host Jeff Shields, NBOA president and CEO, teases out the human stories behind the printed story.
If you want the best people and you want to have the best talent, you're going to need to step up and pay them. And we're going to need a transparent, fair system that everyone can see and be part of and know how they advance.
Speaker 2:The voice you just heard was that of a longtime friend of MBOA, Jerry Walker, associate head of school, also known as the chief business officer at Kent Denver School. This month on the Net Assets Podcast, I'm excited to talk with Jerry about his unusual path to the Independent School Business Office, which began as a history teacher and then technology director. And you'll also hear about Kent Denver's work to retain hourly staff. Now this is an issue I've heard many, many school leaders talk about since the pandemic, and you'll hear how Kent Denver developed a transparent staff compensation system in response. This is definitely a working solution that independent school business leaders will want to hear more about.
Speaker 2:And one quick housekeeping note before we dive into our conversation, starting with this episode and throughout 2025, MBOA will release a new episode of the Net Assets Podcast every month. So be on the lookout for a new episode to drop in February and every month following this year. As always, it will be available wherever you get your podcasts and on nboa.org/podcast. Now on with the show. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:It's a great day at NBOA because I am being joined by Jerry Walker, associate head of school for finance and operations and CFO at the Kent Denver School in Englewood, Colorado. Jerry, welcome to the Net Assets Podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Jeff. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 2:I have had the opportunity to be on your campus, and it is absolutely one of the most stunning campuses I've had a chance to visit. It must be a pleasure to go to work there every day. And you've been there for a while. Remind me what your ten years have been at Kent Denver.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It has. It's twenty five years now. Unbelievable. The quarter century mark.
Speaker 1:Like, how
Speaker 2:do you feel? About that, Jerry?
Speaker 1:I old.
Speaker 2:Hey. I know the feeling. I know the feeling. But, really, it is such a beautiful campus in a beautiful part of our country. It's just really great.
Speaker 2:That's your workplace. That's your learning community.
Speaker 1:It is a couple 100 acres here. It's gorgeous, and we're lucky to work here. I think it's one of the things that often the kids don't realize, but the adults who are here know that we're in a very special place. Beautiful views, beautiful campus.
Speaker 2:So twenty five years. Before we get started into our conversation, I wanna talk to you about some of the great work you've been doing at your school in rethinking faculty and staff compensation. But could you just share how you ended up in this role at Kent Denver? Because I know this story, so I'm gonna just say it's in, full disclosure. I I know a little bit of this story, but your journey, I think, is very interesting, and I do think it's unique from many of your peers across the country.
Speaker 2:Would So you just mind telling us your background and how you landed in this role and your twenty five year career at Kent Denver?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Serendipity is probably the word here. It's a strange journey, but it's been a great journey for me. Came out of college. I went right into teaching in public schools.
Speaker 1:Taught in public schools here in Colorado, also in Wisconsin, moved away for a little bit, and then came back to Colorado. At the same time, I had an interest in technology. Went ahead and pursued a master's degree, MCIS degree, comp side. I came back to Denver, and a private school here in town, Grayland Country Day, great school up the road for us. They were looking for a director of technology and worked there, Grayland, for six years in technology with elementary school age kids.
Speaker 1:And Ken Denver, a little bit down the road from Grayland, a six twelve school, also was in the market for a director of technology. Back in 1999, before y two k and all of that and applied and came down here to do that job. And for my first few years here at Kent Denver, I was the director of technology. I oversaw both the infrastructure and the educational programs, taught computer science course, AP computer science. And then we had a construction project, and that was a new science and technology building, major renovation here.
Speaker 1:The then business officer, Sally Cummings, some of the listeners may remember that.
Speaker 2:That name's familiar, but I don't think I had
Speaker 1:the pleasure. The name's familiar then. Unfortunately, Sally had to take leave during that project, and the head of school at the time, Todd McLaurin, asked me if I would only because I'd been so involved in the construction and had been working so much on that piece of it, if I would be willing to continue on, take over the project manager piece of the construction project, and also on an interim basis, fill in the business office, which I said yes to. That was great. I was doing kind of both that and business and a construction project all at the same time.
Speaker 2:I think you saying yes is a really important piece of your career trajectory. I think people present you opportunities, and you seem to
Speaker 1:say yes a lot. I did. It's probably a weakness. What's our strengths are weaknesses, Jeff. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. I very rarely say no to anything on campus, and it's gotten me into a lot of coaching, advising, teaching, buildings, whatever it is. But it's also made the journey interesting and exciting. I think yes is a good default answer.
Speaker 1:Usually, the business officer is always the no guy. That And I I offered him on the finance side of things. But when they ask me
Speaker 2:to do something, yeah, it's usually yes. I don't believe you say no even when you have to as a CFI. You try to find a way to yes. So are you in this job in an interim basis and then you end up staying with it or just continued? Remind me of that part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, was in it in an interim basis and worked with a great team of folks up here with certainly more accounting and finance background than I had at the time, and got involved with NBOA as well as taking a few courses. I'd had a little business experience from before with some family, but took some finance, some accounting classes, met with our folks here, and I really enjoyed the role. It was a interesting pivot at the time to move away from the tech piece, ended up hiring a new tech director who then reported to me. Then instead of interim, I was the director of finance and operations.
Speaker 1:And evidently, I've done okay with it because they haven't replaced me yet. So
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great. Two things about that. First, to all you philosophy majors out there, yes, you too can be a business officer at an independent school. Right?
Speaker 2:A lot of moms and dads out there worry about their philosophy major sons and daughters. No official employment is possible. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a mystery philosophy in computer science, not usually what the CFO's got.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And and just that you stepped into the role, and you really stuck with it. That's really great. And we're grateful for it, actually.
Speaker 2:We're here to talk about some of the interesting work you've been doing in staff compensation. And it seems to me that the story begins with you're at the end of the pandemic. We're dealing with post pandemic, and we're dealing with post pandemic inflation. And you're concerned that your food service staff, you work with a major food service provider, but the staff, which is not uncommon for independent schools, the staff had been employed at your school doing this work for a while. But you were really worried that you were gonna lose a significant number of that staff because you just weren't competitive with the other food service opportunities, let's say, that were in your geographic area.
Speaker 1:Is that accurate? That's very accurate. It's an interesting dilemma because when you outsource, typically, you don't have to worry about these problems. But what we found, the food service staff who our kids, our faculty, the adults here really love. We have a great food service program.
Speaker 1:It always rates very high with kids and with families. It's one of the components that we do well here. And what we found is with rapid inflation cost in Denver, a lot of those entry level to mid level food service jobs, which pre pandemic were in the $13 to $15 an hour range. All of a sudden, everything in Denver was going to be $20 an hour starting wage at McDonald's or any corporation, any fast food. And our folks who had seen raises, which were pretty typical, all of a sudden had opportunities to go somewhere else and earn $1.02, or even $3 more an hour than they currently were with our vendor.
Speaker 1:And we were already locked in with a price with that vendor for the year, contractual obligation, and had a sit down with both the food service manager here and the employees. Because I knew that the talk was that they were planning on several of them leaving for a dollar or 2 more an hour. And for hourly folks, a dollar an hour translates to a little over $2 a year, and that's real money. And mid year in between contracts had a meeting with the food service folks, eight of them, myself, and I said, What is it that we need to do to keep you here? Because you are valued members of our community.
Speaker 1:You may be an outsourced vendor, but you're wearing Kit Dimmer gear. Many of them go to the games, and we make a special point to include them in opening and closing meetings and appreciations. And I think they really feel like they are, if not our employees, certainly important members of our community. And I said, We want to continue that. How do we get there?
Speaker 1:And I think it was a great conversation that allowed us to bypass some of the bureaucracy that can exist with vendors. They have a structure and they need that, but this was just directly interjecting myself in the process. And I said, Okay, so let's get down to it. You all need 1.5 an hour raise per person across the board. What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Some conversations, we talked about a number. I went back, calculated to that. Then I met with the corporate representatives and said, This is what the contract would have to change. Let's change it next month. But I want to
Speaker 2:see 100% of it go do that compensate. I really like that part of this story, Jerry, that you really went to bat and said, we'll give you more money, but it has to go to the staff that we're really working on behalf of.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it was successful. They all stay, and they actually are all still here. We have not lost any of them and they're doing a great job. And it was one of those quirks in the economy where you need that 8% kind of inflation.
Speaker 1:And honestly, with bus drivers, food service workers, custodial, some of those staff, whether they're insourced or outsourced, I think that rate was even higher, at least locally here in Denver than the 8%. And we were seeing bus driver salaries move from $14.15 dollars an hour to $21 an hour in the course of a year. And so we had to make some pretty rapid adjustments.
Speaker 2:That must have been a great meeting to go to when you got to share that news with the staff. I know business officers get to share a lot of tough news, but you got to share some really good news. I know people who are going to listen to this podcast are gonna ask, how did you pay for it? How did you find that money in the budget? What are your insights there?
Speaker 2:How did you do it?
Speaker 1:Where the rubber hits the road, right? Where it's always tricky. Our budgets at most schools are pretty tight. And you're like, well, what does this translate to? You're adjusting this contract mid year.
Speaker 1:You're adding tens of thousands of dollars in expense. How's this going to play out? But I think from my perspective, we want to allocate resources to what matters most. And I made a pretty compelling argument, I believe, to both the head of school and our finance committee that we needed to make this adjustment. It was the right adjustment to make.
Speaker 1:And that like many institutions, we often have a little bit of sandbagging, a little bit of fluff in there, especially where things were your annual fund. Generally, you tend to under budget a little bit what you really anticipate your annual fund to come out. We had a fortunate situation. We were open for most of the pandemic, and we actually saw our annual fund donations go up. I think families were very appreciative of the fact that we were staying in school so much significantly channeled some of that.
Speaker 1:Had some cost savings during that last year of the pandemic as well on transportation, on some of the times when we were closed, on utilities and other things. So reallocated some of those savings to cover those additional costs.
Speaker 2:But you spent some capital, some personal capital in making the argument, like you said, and really framing it that it was important to the other individuals, the board, your finance committee, the head of school. So you really put some capital and put some real emphasis behind that of your own, and I think that's really impressive. What also happened was it opened the door to you looking at staff compensation more broadly at Kent Denver. Now tell me about that. What was the next step in this journey, so to speak, when you began thinking about I my understanding is you did some some overhaul of faculty compensation but didn't do staff compensation at the same time.
Speaker 2:And did this lead to that broader discussion?
Speaker 1:It did. I would say two things led to it, but this was certainly a factor in that. The other was we brought in an HR director who, frankly, before this, didn't even have an HR director. I was HR as well, which I'm not recommending by any circumstances. Need HR professionals.
Speaker 1:I benefited greatly and sat down and in part of working through our compensation models with our HR director, she was very intrigued by our faculty compensation band and step system, which now it's been ten years that we've had in place. So is the new head of school, David Brammer, who came to us from Innsworth. He looked at it and really liked the model that we had on the faculty side. But she pointed out, what are we doing on the staff side? And it's harder in some ways on the staff side than it is on the faculty.
Speaker 1:And I sat down and worked with Shannon Rybecki, a great HR person here. We developed a staff pyramid model that we felt allowed us quite a bit of range and flexibility. Because obviously, as everyone knows, staff salaries vary not only by local economy and demographics, but also by job type. So it's really hard with that entry level associate who might be in technology versus that entry level associate who might be working in your communications office or maybe someone who's working in admissions or somewhere else. That's just what the market is with tech and those other things.
Speaker 1:So we tried to develop a system that gave us both flexibility, but that we could post. Colorado, by the way, in 2021 switched over and now mandatory reporting of salary ranges.
Speaker 2:Which is the trend across the country. So Colorado might have been earlier in the process, but they're certainly not alone.
Speaker 1:That's right. And I think that was helpful in this conversation too when talking to your board and things. We need to be very transparent about what those salaries are. Since it allows for a range, devising that system, I think worked pretty well for us. We divided the pyramid in two systems.
Speaker 1:One more folks on the staff who really are more instructional support and supervise often people at the highest levels. And the other side are content or technical expertise. And so those that really are just your database person or your network person, but they have a lot of technical expertise. They might not supervise anyone, but they have a lot of technical expertise. Or someone who might be your director of your libraries or communications staff.
Speaker 1:Those folks do often supervise people, not the same technical expertise. So we first bifurcated the system into two pieces, but allowed this pyramid with associates at the bottom, specialists, then assistant and associate directors or project managers, up to another layer that basically is your directors or your technical experts, we've called them, and allowed us to build a pyramid, a structure. So there is some kind of hierarchical structure that with wide ranges that allows folks to know, one, when they come into a job, where they're at in that structure, and what the range of salaries are. And two, we made it very clear that unlike with faculty where often your teachers are doing the same job throughout their career, They might be teaching four sections and advising and coaching, and they may do that for thirty years. With staff, often that's not the case.
Speaker 1:And where do we have opportunities for them to grow or change, add responsibilities, and can we build that into the structure? Rolled it out two years ago, did a lot of work with the staff on explaining to them that sometimes, in fact often, unlike in our abandoned step system, which we can talk about in a minute for faculty, you might ceiling out. There just might not be another place for you to go until someone else leaves, or you might have to leave this institution and go somewhere else to find more opportunity. And that's certainly one of the big differences, I think, between staff and faculty. I think one of the reasons it was well received was we were honest.
Speaker 1:We just laid it out there, and we certainly had a lot of input from both supervisors and actual employees in Yeah. Putting together the
Speaker 2:That's a question. Who did you involve in the process, and how long did it take? Because I think people need to understand this isn't something that you do quickly. Right? It's not something you rush through because it does require a lot of thought, and it requires a plan for how you're gonna communicate it.
Speaker 2:I always talk about when you start touching people's compensation, there's nothing probably more sensitive to people in an organization than that. But who did you involve, and how long was the thought process to build this and actually roll it out?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Great questions. The first person I involved was Shannon. Basically, to be totally honest, we worked out the two of us a kind of construct or structure to begin with before really bringing anyone else to it with lacking detail. 30,000 foot overview.
Speaker 1:And one that we liked, where we were delineating between the roles and all of that. Went out to the supervisors first who supervised staff directly and said, This is what we're thinking. And what do you see? What is some input you have? Is this a good idea?
Speaker 1:They were overwhelmingly in favor of it because it gave them there's a piece of this which is part of the evaluative process. Kind of are we going to standardize that? How can they have some clarity as supervisors for what these roles are? It would mean reworking job descriptions, of course, and titles. But they were definitely on board because they felt that was an area where we had inconsistencies between departments.
Speaker 1:And this allowed us to make that more consistent. So once they gave us some input, it was very good input, then went back and had some open meetings with all of the staff and said, Look, we haven't done anything yet. And the first principal before we even get into this, and this was true when we did band and step with faculty, and I would say it was important to say first is the structure we come up with will be such that no one here will make less money. Gotcha. First rule, whatever we come up with, you're not going to make any less money than you do now.
Speaker 1:And that alleviates some initial anxiety.
Speaker 2:Of course. Of course. Yep.
Speaker 1:Second, it's not going to change your benefits in any way. And our staff here have the same benefits our faculty and administrators do, so that was pretty easy. But you take those two things that they can be worried about right off
Speaker 2:the table. The scariest things. Just go after them first.
Speaker 1:And then try to frame it to the positive about how this is going to give us some consistency, some transparency, and allow you to know where you're at and frankly where everyone else who's on staff is and what the rules are and what the structure is on how you advance or can you advance and what the range of salaries. And we're going to just let everyone know that and have that on our website on this employee portal section so that you can all see it. And it's right there. And once you talk about that transparency piece in a system that for years, many schools, was not transparent and individually negotiated, I think that I know that was very well received. People were like, Seemed like there was equity and fairness that we were bringing to the system that although I don't think the old system was necessarily unfair or inequitable, but it was less transparent and clear.
Speaker 1:And when you can add that clarity and transparency,
Speaker 2:they were very much behind it. What are some of the ways you can move up through this process? Is it professional development? Is it certifications? Is it tenure?
Speaker 2:It sounds like your supervisor's performance review plays a role. Can you just give us a flavor of what are the things that are in this transparent process that help folks understand how they can achieve a higher band or a higher compensation level?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Of course. The one thing is tenure is factored in initially because of their current tenure at the school and salaries. We really aren't using tenure very much after that on the staff side. And frankly, moved away even on the faculty band and step side that tenure has been not eliminated, but less emphasized.
Speaker 1:And instead, professional development is basically taken over as the way you want to move up in either side, either our faculty system or on our staff side, is through professional development. And so you've got to demonstrate, maybe it's certifications. In some fields that lends itself very easily to that, but not in all. It could be taking on additional responsibilities. And we're encouraging our staff to be advocates for themselves and review their job description annually, and to also make suggestions to their supervisors about additional responsibilities or jobs that they might be willing to take on or we have an interest in.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we don't have an opening there or have any interest or we don't need that, and we have to be clear about that. But at least it shifts some of the emphasis toward the employee and agency toward the employee to start being able to manage their own career. And so that they can say, Look, I'm a specialist one and I'd like to become a specialist two. And we clearly lay out what the differences are between a specialist one and a specialist two. And I to say, Okay, here's the differences.
Speaker 1:For you to become E Specialist two, which one of those things are you going to take on? Which other responsibilities or what other certifications do you need? And what is your plan to get there? We have a very aggressive professional development budget, which helps people pay for that, both on the staff side and on the faculty side. So working with them, trying to encourage their agency and ownership of their own career paths, knowing in some of these jobs that they may move from a specialist one to a specialist two, but there may not be an opening above that.
Speaker 1:And so then they've capped out until maybe there's an opportunity somewhere else in the organization that they could apply for. But certainly within that kind of associate one, associate two, specialist one, specialist two, titles we've assigned to these with clearly delineated differences in level of responsibility,
Speaker 2:and then what professional development you would need to make that adjustment to move up that pyramid. That's really great. Same question as before. Net increase to your compensation line after you did this work. And as we wrap things up, how is it working today for your school?
Speaker 1:I think the net increase was real. The good news is much like when we changed our band step program for our faculty ten years ago, I couched it in the goals of the institution and our mission. One of the things that we always say is that we want to have the best faculty and the best staff in the city, the And state, the only way we're going get there is if we compensate people at the highest level, and we do. I like to say we're the best paying shop in town on the faculty side, and we are. And then we have the data to prove that.
Speaker 1:But when I went back to the finance committee and said, if you want to do that, we're going put our money where our mouths are. Now this is going to be a significant increase. We had some efficiencies on the administrative side. We're a little bit more efficient than many of our fellow schools in the area. And that allowed us some things.
Speaker 1:We also had some student growth that was happening during these years. But when we implemented the band step system with faculty ten years ago, that was a 15% increase in our faculty salaries in a single year to implement that system. It did not correspond to a corresponding 15% increase in tuition. We were able to do that with a much smaller increase. With the staff piece, which has now only been out, this will be year three of it, we had some benefit because of inflation.
Speaker 1:Honestly, we looked at a couple years of 6.5% tuition increases, which for us is very high.
Speaker 2:I saw that. For a lot of schools, that would be very high and it would get people's attention.
Speaker 1:It would. We had some cover there, frankly, because of inflation, but also because we wanted to implement this system and there was some corresponding costs with it. I do think our finance committee and our board in general has been very responsive and very open to that idea that if you want the best people and you want to have the best talent, you're going to need to step up and pay them. And we're going to need a transparent, fair system that everyone can see and be part of and know how they advance. The other thing that's interesting that the board was really excited about, when we did the faculty system, rather than basing their band jumps or these large jumps in their salary on student achievement, which I think some public schools have done, it was once again based on professional development.
Speaker 1:That did not necessarily mean an advanced degree because there's a lot of ways here that you can demonstrate some strong professional development for both faculty, and we did the same thing with staff. Encourage you, if you really want to move up, there's got to be some significant professional development, and for staff, some additional responsibilities. And many of our board members were very responsive to that kind of language.
Speaker 2:Very impressive. Thank you so much for sharing that story, and there's so many nuggets that I think other folks can learn from as they think about compensation at their own schools. And I hope this has peaked folks' appetite for some of the work NBOA has done the past year on our mission anchored compensation strategies, which is available at nboa.org. I know a lot of people are on this journey. They want quality faculty and staff.
Speaker 2:The retention is such a big deal. And Jerry, you really helped us move the ball forward with a lot of interesting ways to think about that. So thank you so much for being a guest on the Net Assets Podcast. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Jeff, it's always a pleasure. MBLA has been a very important part of my professional development over the twenty five years that I've been here at Kent Denver. I we're a member all the way back then, and I love giving back. I love being part of the organization, and more than happy to chat with other schools about some of the things we're doing here.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate you saying that, and I'm sure that many folks might take you up on that offer. So thanks, Jerry, for a great conversation. I appreciate you being here. Thank you, Jeff. And thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of the Net Assets Podcast from MBOA.
Speaker 2:Join us each month as we continue our conversations with key voices from business leaders in pre K through independent schools. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. For more information on MBOA, visit us online at mboa.org. Thanks for listening and tune in next time.