Now is the moment to speak directly about how we can lengthen the number of years that a head can remain at the same school, assuming that the head has been and is still effective in that role.

1. Lengthen board tenure: Boards should consider ending the practice of two three-year terms for board members to allow for longer or more terms so that board institutional memory may exist longer than a typical 5-to-8-year window. This might also include allowing board officers to “time out” from their term limits as long as they are serving in an officer role.
2. End term limits: This option can be risky but is also very healthy IF the Governance Committee does embrace and practice diligently the 8 functions of the Governance (COT) Committee: cultivate a pool of prospects; screen them; invite them carefully; orient them; train them; evaluate them; and if necessary, warn and then possibly remove them.
3. Ensure that the Governance Committee is led by a strong chair, who along with the board chair, knows that this committee is the most important one on the board.
4. Ensure that the Head Evaluation and Support Committee is functioning effectively and avoids the classic tools that undermine heads such as in camera/executive sessions, 360 evaluation, and inappropriate evaluation criteria including criticism of the head’s style or personality.
5. Nurture the head by lending regular, appropriate support (including for the family), conducting a benchmarked annual compensation review, and renewing the contract on a timely basis.
6. Ensure that the accrediting associations make board health, specifically the board/head relationship, a key focus during onsite visits.

IF boards follow these basic protocols, we can extend head tenure which normally means greater financial security for schools, stronger enrollment, better reputation, better academic outcomes, fewer crises and power vacuums, and more mission consistency over time.

Normally, a healthy search takes 18 months; and a true transition can take up to five years.  The costs of both search and transition can be enormous. Wiser boards serving longer terms with longer term chairs should help reduce the speed of head turnover.

Many board members will ask, “What about fresh blood on the board?” My reply is, “Yes, we do need that but NOT blood on the floor!” which is often the product of short-term boards with short-term chairs leading to short-term heads.

Here are three true stories about heads who should not have lost their jobs:

1. Following a long-term, very successful Head, George arrives to lead an independent School. Under the prior Head, the Board delegated many of its functions to her. However, during the search the Board felt reinvigorated and emboldened to re-engage in operations. The Board has had issues with some of the senior administrators under the prior Head and asks the new Head to fire one of them. The Head maintains that he has not had enough time in his role to observe and evaluate this person’s performance properly. Nonetheless, the Board insists that the person must be let go. The Head acquiesces. The uproar that follows and the blame that unfolds prompts the Board to fire the Head. The Head took the fall for a Board driven initiative.
2. Jill is a talented school Head now in her 5^th year with a new Chair. A crisis ensues when a student posts on social media photos of upper school girls and boys with their headshots imposed upon AI generated, sexually explicit body poses. The Head dismisses the errant female student immediately, but angry parents demand that the Board fire the Head. The Board initially supports the Head, and then flipflops and fires the Head under pressure.
3. Three Heads in a major city all stepped down recently not for poor performance but because their statements about the Mideast conflict were flawed in the minds of the Board Members and parents either because the Head made no statement; the Head’s statement was insufficiently supportive of Israel; or the Head’s statement was insensitive to the damage done to the Palestinians.  These Heads could not “win” no matter what they said or did not say.

In all these cases, Boards either neglected to protect or nurture their Heads, or were in the process of undermining their Heads. These examples indicate the need for strong chairs with long tenures who have full board support to act courageously to protect the head for simply doing the job. We all hear stories like these. We hear them almost daily from around the world. No school or head is immune no matter how secure the head feels and no matter the wealth, reputation and power that the school commands in the community.