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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.
At the end of the day, it isn't just about filling seats. It is about providing enough net tuition revenue to support the operation of our school, and that is how we help our schools to fulfill their missions.
Speaker 2:Hi, welcome to the NetAssets Podcast. I'm Jeff Shields, MBLA President and CEO, and we're going to be talking about all things enrollment on this episode with my friend and colleague, Gonzalez. Kathy's the assistant head of school for enrollment management at the Hawkins School, which is located in Cleveland, Ohio, and a few other places, as we'll probably learn during our discussion. Welcome to the NetAssets Podcast, Kathy.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Before we get started, I think it's so interesting to hear about one's professional journey to independent schools. So can you briefly describe how you started working in independent schools and your journey to the Hawkins School and your role you have today?
Speaker 1:Sure. So I actually am a product of independent school education. I went to Holy Names Academy in Seattle, Washington where I was born and raised, and then headed off to state college at Washington State University after that. And after I got my undergraduate degree in communications and political science, I headed back home where I actually landed a job at my alma mater at a Boon Eames, and I was actually director of the annual fund. And I literally this is the funny story I have.
Speaker 1:When I was being interviewed, I actually didn't know what philanthropy meant because of my cultural background Right. Philanthropy was something like we tithed at church. But Yeah. I didn't come from a background where I really didn't know what that word meant. So I remember having to go home and look it up.
Speaker 1:But I was definitely a connector, and I definitely believed in giving back to the community and all of that. But that was really my first job. And I was, at that time, charged with, I think, raising $250,000.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And we met our goal that year, and I remember thinking, I am working way too hard. I think my salary at the time was, like, $15,000. I'm not kidding. Probably. It was pretty funny, and it just evolved from there.
Speaker 1:So I went from there to I actually then was recruited out to work at the Berci School, which is a preschool through fifth grade school. I've been to that school. Yes. DiG Berci at the time, she was the founder of the school. She hired me.
Speaker 1:And at the time, I was I think by the time I got to Baerci, I was about 23 years old, and I was recruited there to be a PE teacher of all things. And things went really well, and I really evolved from there. So I went back and got my master's degree. I did that actually in business, not in education. And because I weighed out all the pros and cons, and I didn't know if I wanted to teach for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:And and at that time, I also got married and started having children. And from there, I again, I was doing some co teaching in the various classes there. I did everything from subbing in the library to subbing all across the grade levels. And then our director of admission at the time fell ill over the holiday break, over the winter break in December. And she was the admission director, and she was very strong, Kelly Montsall at the time.
Speaker 1:And everything was in her head, and she literally couldn't communicate. And so me and another colleague stepped in to take over the rest of the year. Now mind you, this is in December, so a critical time in the admission Sure. Process. And I really did learn by doing.
Speaker 1:And because I had served in various assets of the school, I was pretty prepared to, like, tour families around and tell them about all the things I loved about the school. And so like many people in enrollment and admission, I fell into this role. Once I started, I just loved it. And I did that for probably my last five years at Berchy, and then I was recruited to university prep, where I spent just over ten years there, first working with the family association and then was recruited to be their director of admission, which at the time, again, I worked for a head of school that was happened to be a female head of school. And I remember saying to her when she asked me to apply for the position, I said, I think this position might be too big for me.
Speaker 1:Like, I I have young children. But, again, I think the the what's so important about this story is the importance of your head of school really seeing something in you and sometimes that you don't see in yourself. And she encouraged me to do it, and that was like a godsend. I learned so much in that role. I feel like I had such a great impact on the school.
Speaker 1:I raised my hand for everything with the whole energy that I wanted to learn. So, like, the committee on excellence, the head search committee, like, anything where I could learn more perspective on the school, I was always the person that raised my hand to do those things. And think that probably contributed the most so that once my own children were grown and going off to college, I could really go anywhere. My son was a senior in high school, and I started to thought, I'm just gonna start practicing. I haven't interviewed him ten years.
Speaker 1:And so I need to get road map there. And so I did. And before I knew it, by January, was like a finalist in four searches. And Hawken was one of them. And I was very familiar with Hawken because every year would send faculty and administrators to visit and study the innovative things Hawken was doing.
Speaker 1:So I knew about it for that reason. I also knew Scott Looney, our head of school, because he had come from the enrollment background. He was integral in Crow's Nest every year, and I'd gone to Crow's Nest. And so once I made that connection and I came and visited Hawken, it became very clear for me of those five or those four positions that this was the one I felt most attracted to and really because of the school and their commitment to not only developing the student's academic side and potential, but really their character along with their intellect. So that was really what drew me here.
Speaker 2:That's really fascinating, and I love hearing stories from independent school business leaders who started at their alma mater. That must be so rewarding, that connection, and to be able to give back, particularly working with the annual fund right out of the gate. So you've really understood the importance of a variety of revenue streams by how important the annual fund is to a school's overall financial health. Thanks for sharing that. We're at the start of a school year, and when I talk to business officers, I generally say, how's your enrollment?
Speaker 2:What's your enrollment look like? Because if they tell me they hit their enrollment targets, I know what kind of year they're gonna have. It's gonna be strong. It's gonna be strategic, and they're gonna do the work they really love doing. But if their enrollment is off, then I know they're gonna be chasing down that money and having to fill the gap.
Speaker 2:And so I think it's so important to talk about enrollment because it's obviously inextricable to a school's overall financial health. Before we start talking about some of the work you're doing, I really enjoyed interviewing you for our Budget Meets Mission course, which is an online course that MBOA offers to individuals who aren't business officers to really understand the independent school business model, to understand financial terms, understand expense drivers and revenue levers, etcetera, etcetera. Why do you think that kind of professional development is important, particularly for enrollment leaders?
Speaker 1:I think again, I think one of the gifts I got early on was being able to work in the different areas of an individual. It has impacted me professionally. I think the way I approach the partnership and the work that is critical to me meeting my goals in our department and the way in which I interact with other senior leaders. So our director of advancement, our CFO, I can't fulfill my goals unless I'm working literally in lockstep with those other senior leaders. So I think it's so important for enrollment professionals to have a understanding.
Speaker 1:You were saying earlier about checking in with the business professionals to see if they've met their enrollment goals.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting because when I got to Hawken, oftentimes, I would say for the first five years, even through the pandemic, we had record enrollment year over year. And yet my question was always, have we hit our NTR goal? Yes. We need to have a critical mass of students. Right?
Speaker 1:But, like, we can have record enrollment every year and not hit that NTR goal, and you're still in the same boat. It's kinda like a shiny penny where it's, like, nice on the outside, but at the end, you're still like, there's a lot of stuff that you gotta fix up. You're still chasing that money to support your operating budget. And so I think those two things are for enrollment professionals to understand that, that it's not just about what your enrollment is, but it's have you brought in enough revenue to actually support your operating budget? Without that, you can't pay your most important commodity, and that's your people.
Speaker 1:That's your faculty members. That's why people are paying this money to go to our independent schools is for that faculty that's gonna engage on a day to day basis with those students. I think having that close relationship with your and understanding that the importance of net tuition revenue is actually critical for most enrollment professionals to really meet their goals.
Speaker 2:Kathy, that is why you're an ideal guest for the Net Assets Podcast. Out of the gate, you bring up NTR, net tuition revenue, and how important and I would even go further to say it's the only number that really Matters. The school's finances. Kathy, I was really interested when I was looking at your background that you're just such a natural organizer and convener of other independent school professionals. I saw while you were at university prep in Seattle, you founded the Puget Sound Independent Schools Admission Consortium and Seattle's annual independent school fair for people of color.
Speaker 2:You would think admissions officers would be competitive with each other, in that market. Why is it important for admissions professionals to collaborate?
Speaker 1:It's so fascinating to me. And what I found having been in enrollment in different regions is that the collegiality is different. So I would say that the Seattle consortium was very collegial. I have colleagues from that consortium that we're very good friends to this day. And if I need some advice, if I need to tackle a problem, I can call them in a heartbeat, which is great.
Speaker 1:What I have found in independent schools is that very few things are original ideas. Okay. I I really do mean it. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're constantly learning from one another. And I would say that for us, we our biggest driver in coming together as a consortium is we found that our local parochial schools were having a lot of success in coming together and leveraging the numbers of schools that they had. And we thought to ourselves, why aren't we doing that? As independent schools, we go through this rigorous accreditation process. Why aren't we highlighting that together as independent schools that we go through this process?
Speaker 1:What we found is that we were oftentimes even in marketing our schools, we were going to a local children's magazine and paying them a lot of money individually to do our individual advertising, paying them to put on a school fair for us that we knew if we leverage our talents and our resources together, we could do a far better job than a local magazine could. Right? Yes. And our number one driver was how do we decrease the barriers to students and families in considering and thinking about our schools? So why not come together to better educate our community, put our resources together, both time and talent and money, right, and leverage those resources to outreach to students and families who might not otherwise be thinking about independent school education?
Speaker 2:If we put our money where our mouth is, then we would really say that even though we're all independent schools, we're all unique. We have a unique value proposition, and a student may not be right for all of our schools. So why not work together and create the best fit? Because I truly believe we all win with that independent school enrollment regardless of which choice the student or family ultimately makes. But you're very, very business minded, very business savvy to take a look at that approach and say, why are we handing this money over to them?
Speaker 2:We could do it ourselves, and we could probably do it better.
Speaker 1:And the reality is, Jeff, we did do it better. Yeah. So much so that it's still going on. There were definitely naysayers in our group that were like they were worried. Like, is this gonna give us a lot of applicants that are not really serious about our schools?
Speaker 1:Is this gonna decrease our applicants? And what we found is across the board, whether we were smaller schools who benefited from being in this group of the larger schools like the university preps, the Seattle Academies, and the Lakeside schools, they all benefited from Yes. Us coming together. And and, again, that's why there's it's still going now.
Speaker 2:Now, Kathy, the Hawkins admissions team is frankly huge compared to most other schools. I see that there's 12 FTE on your website, and I also know that Hawken is managing a really interesting school structure with two lower schools, the Hawken School, the main school, the upper school campus, a mastery school, and the Birchwood of Hawkins School. So how do you all work together towards the same strategic goals and align your work while allowing for flexibility because of the nature of each of those components?
Speaker 1:So we again, as you said, Hawken is different. Quite frankly, it's one of the things that drew me to it. Yeah. When I came here, they had just acquired the Birchwood School of Hawken. It merged in 2016.
Speaker 1:I came in 2018, so that was still new. Interestingly enough, during COVID is when we opened the mastery school of Hawken. So that's a high school campus that's located in the University Circle area of Cleveland. And our two mother campuses are Lindhurst campus, which is our preschool through eighth grade, and our original upper school, nine through 12, is located in the Gates Mills. So all of our campuses are at least twenty minutes away from each other.
Speaker 1:That alone is a unique challenge.
Speaker 2:Challenges. Yep.
Speaker 1:And very interesting. And so one of the things that I was drawn to, I ran track in college. I've always been a sports person on the side. I believe that I'm a team builder. That's one of my strengths.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that that we were charged with is how do we ensure that students and families who are applying to Hawken, regardless of which campus they're applying to, they have a common feel. It feels like one school. Even though some of the people that are drawn to the various campuses are different, they come from different demographic backgrounds, but we want them to have this common Hawken experience when they go through our admission process and when they graduate from our school. So I really worked hard, and I continue to do that. A lot of my work is around working with the admission directors and offices on our respective campuses.
Speaker 1:So while it sounds large, our average office has three FTEs on that campus. So so it's not 12 people on one campus. We Sure. Have a bit basically, an admission office on each one of our four campuses.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:We typically meet on a monthly basis.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Altogether. And it's usually a Zoom, but there are other times when we'll meet on our respective campuses. Right? We're always talking about we're always reminding the team that this is the direction that we're going in. The nice part about enrollment and admission is that it's clear.
Speaker 1:It's like, this is the enrollment goal that we're going for. This is the NTR goal that we have, and we literally break that down by campus. This is where we are today. And the beautiful thing is that we have documents that any of our team members can go on at any moment and see exactly where we are, grade level by campus, net tuition revenue, where we are with our rolling admission during the summertime. Any of that is a trend that is there.
Speaker 1:It's transparent. And as we're moving through our cycle, they can see that at any point in time. Additionally, what's so beneficial for us is that we have an admission director on each campus. So one thing I say to my admission directors is you don't have to call the person that's two states over. You've got an admission director right here that you all should be working in lockstep together.
Speaker 1:Many of the challenges that you're facing them together, you're just on a different campus. So leverage each other. We have position coordinators on each of our campuses. Leverage each other. So in addition to our monthly full team meeting, they also meet respectively with their position at the other campuses.
Speaker 1:They're getting together on a regular basis and using each other as resource. So does that synergy among that entire team with the four campuses that you just described? There's really some synergy.
Speaker 2:But you're actually more than the sum of the individual parts, it sounds
Speaker 1:like. That's exactly right. And, again, that has been intentional work. That has not happened by accident. When I came here, there were some people on the team that had never been to the other campuses, which I find fascinating.
Speaker 1:So now everybody has been to all of the campuses. They also if you're a member of this team, my expectation is that you can explain that program to any family. For sure. Families for all the time that they have a child that's looking at our ninth grade at the Gates Mills, our upper school campus, and they have a third grader that's looking at our Lyndhurst campus. And that admission director needs to be able to have a basic understanding of all of our programs, not just at the campus that they serve on.
Speaker 1:And so being intentional about that work has has allowed us to better serve families.
Speaker 2:This is really interesting that we are in very challenging, maybe uncertain times is a better way to put it, whether it's economically, politically, culturally speaking. Are you entering into the school year 2526 thinking differently, doing differently? Are you having different conversations with your team? Are you having different conversations with students and families? What's the atmosphere like for you as an enrollment leader at a school like Hawken?
Speaker 1:Yes. So I would a 100%, we are having different kinds of conversations that I would say we weren't having two years ago, three years ago. One of the capacities I serve on is I serve on our board DIJB committee. And one of the conversations we've been having this year that we have never had before is how explicit should we use those words on our website. The board is a 100% reaffirmed our DIJB mission statement, all the work that we're doing.
Speaker 1:But how much do we wanna put it out there to the external people of Hawken who don't understand what we're doing and put, quite frankly, targets on the heads of a lot of the faculty and administrators who are directly responsible for doing that work with our students. Yes. And in short, the board supported and said, no. We're gonna keep everything on our website as we said. But what we're gonna continue to focus on is what these words mean at Hawken.
Speaker 1:So what do we mean when we talk about equity? What do we mean when we talk about belonging? And that these things are things that we're doing all across our program, and they are to serve all of our students. Yeah. They're not to serve a piece of our students.
Speaker 1:It's not for just our underprivileged or underserved students.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:All of our students, including our white students who you would assume come from a privileged background.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I'm talking about financially, a privileged background.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:They need this work just as much as our underserved students do, quite frankly.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So that's how we've been approaching our work a little bit differently in just reaffirming our commitment to this critical work, and we find that it's more critical than ever before.
Speaker 2:That's terrific. That's really thoughtful. And, really, I think a lot of people can benefit from hearing that example. As we wrap up our time together, Kathy, it has flown by. Yes.
Speaker 2:There's so much to say about enrollment. I'd love to get your perspective on the best advice you would give enrollment leaders at this particular time.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. And to narrow that down to one is a little bit of a challenge. I think that the advice I would give is being really clear. I'm always surprised, and, Jeff, I think I've told you this. I'm always surprised that sometimes I go to conferences or I engage with enrollment or admission professionals, and they're not really clear about how tuition is set.
Speaker 1:They're not really clear about net tuition revenue. They're not. And I would encourage all enrollment professionals to work very closely with your other leadership members, like leadership team members, your CFO. To me, you should be having a regular touch base with your CFO.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:I mean and I'm amazed at how many people are not. And having an understanding of how is your tuition set? What is your voice in that? Hopefully, you are participating in that process, understanding what the NTR goals are. What is the average net tuition revenue per student that you need to be bringing in?
Speaker 1:I think that enrollment professionals need to know that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so my advice would be to get really clear more on the business side of the house, because I think oftentimes, many of us land into these roles. And oftentimes, it's because we came from the classroom or we were a parent that worked at the school, and we're good with people. And I think really investing in your own professional development through organizations like NBAA and all of the wonderful resources that you have to provide, taking advantage of those. Many of our schools are members, and yet most of us, we might only focus on the enrollment side or the admission organizations, and we don't think about the NBOA. I think that would be my advice is to lean into because at the end of the day, it isn't just about filling seats.
Speaker 1:It is about providing enough net tuition revenue to support the operation of our school, and that is how we help our schools to fulfill their missions.
Speaker 2:That's great and very well said. And I think following that advice doesn't just allow the individual to be a more effective enrollment leader. That's right. It makes them a better partner to the other members of the leadership team and, frankly, the entire school. We're gonna land there, Kathy.
Speaker 2:I knew this was gonna be a great conversation, and I really appreciate it. This is Kathy Gonzalez, assistant head of school for enrollment management at Hawkins School. Kathy, thank you so much for joining the Net Assets Podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2: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 on line at mboa.org. I'm Jeff Shields, mboa president and CEO and your net assets podcast host. Tune in next time.