You’re a Corporate Turn-around Specialist, hired by a national company to save it from insolvency. Here’s what your looking at:
• In 1960, the company had approximately 13,000 franchises around the country and a customer base of 5.2 million.
• By 2000, those numbers had fallen off precipitously: 8600 franchises, with only 2.6 million customers.
• Today there are just less than 6,000 franchises and 1.7 million customers.
What’s driving the decline? You track four fundamental causes:
-In 1960, this company was one of the few privately held companies in its field. Over the last decades, many new privately supported ventures and new public initiatives have increased competition.
-Prior to 1960, the company was able to pull its best employees from a training center that didn’t charge the company for its training. Now the company must employ independent contractors who demand higher wages and who must be trained at company expense.
-Each franchise must invest heavily in buildings and infrastructure to deliver its product. Unfortunately, changing demographics now leave many stores in neighborhoods with those unable to afford their product.
-Most troubling of all, a cultural shift has pulled potential customers away from the company’s core product.
So, Mr. or Mrs. Turnaround Specialist, what do you recommend?
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Ouch! Of course I am talking about Catholic schools. But I find it helpful to step back and pretend, for a moment, this was just any other business, facing these trends. What on earth would a turn around expert recommend?
One thing he or she would NOT recommend: tinkering! Marginal improvements (newer tech, better P.D., improved fundraising, etc.) won’t get to root causes.
The reality is our schools are run separately by dioceses, so there is no "CEO" at the top of the hierarchy than can issue directives for all our schools. But I believe a turn-around specialist would make these fundamental recommendations, applicable to all dioceses:
Schools serving our most disadvantaged students will continue to close. Rather than allow this kind of Darwinian evolution to continue without any planning, dioceses must make hard choices and decide which few of these schools it can truly support and then go “all in” with these few. The parish model will not work—they must be supported by the whole church as a measure of its historical commitment to the poor.
The K-8, 9-12 model is not competitive vs. K-12 schools, except for the wealthiest parish schools. K12 privates leverage the strength of their athletic programs, facilities, lab facilities, advancement and admission offices, etc. to offer more value than our stand alone K8’s can provide. We will need to compete more often as K12’s.
Our schools will need to adopt a “college model” for funding, increasing tuitions and financial aid considerably. We will not be able to sustain excellent teachers unless they can afford to support themselves and their families. They cannot do so at 40, 50 or 60K a year.
Principal and leadership salaries must increase dramatically. We will not have strong schools without smart, creative and confident leaders. Programs like Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education bring young teachers into our schools who fit this profile, but most leave within five years because they can’t afford to raise families. That kind of “talent bleed” will kill us! At minimum, if X = the avg salary of teachers, principals should make 2X or even 2.5X. Heads of NAIS schools make an average of 4.5X!
Schools must be focused on their fundamental mission to create disciples, fully aligned with their Church, staffed by joyful, practicing people of faith, with aspirational goals for all of their students to become saints and scholars! Any “mission-drift” to be all things to all people or compromises in staffing or goal-setting due to expediency are cancerous to this vision.
