📍 .Hello and welcome to the Hybrid School Builders Podcast. I am your host, Rebecca Foley, and I am so glad you are joining me today. I am a fellow grassroots founder who is hoping to make your journey toward founding a sustainable hybrid school a little bit easier. If you are dreaming of starting a hybrid school or perhaps you've already gotten started, you are in the right place.

Join me as we dive into real stories, practical tips and hard one lessons that I have learned to help you launch and grow your program with confidence. Remember, building a hybrid school is not just about creating a business or creating jobs. It's not even about just serving the children who attend the program.

It's literally about reshaping the landscape of education. And we can do that one community, one entrepreneur, and one program at a time.       Hey guys, welcome back. Today I want to talk a little bit about the overlap in the operational oversight. And the board, but I'm going to get there by first talking about this vague, but very important, hard to put your finger on skill.

That I would say is generally something that the executive director needs to be able to do. , Although it can be given to some other higher level operational director. ., This is something that I have seen and heard a lot as, kind of an invisible skill that is not always written in somebody's job description.

, But when it's missing, you end up seeing a lot of inefficiency or shortsightedness, , just because. It. It's just kind of the default if there isn't someone really skilled in this. Okay, so what I'm talking about is the ability to risk assess and resource. Allocate and strategize. All right? So what I mean by those three terms.

Risk assessment is when you, a lot of times this is a very intuitive process and that's, I think why it can be invisible. It's not always, though. Sometimes it's a formal like process of sitting down and running numbers or creating a list of pros and cons., But sometimes it is more of an intuitive process of.

I don't really think it's time to do that yet. It's too risky. We're not sure if we're stable enough. We shouldn't fill in the blank. Add a program, hire a person, , invest in this platform yet because we aren't sure. We're going to have the, fill in the blank again. , Staffing students, grant, whatever it is.

There's some unknowns and you're trying to make a decision going forward and you have to look behind and look ahead, which is part of the strategize. These all kind of work together and say, I just feel like it's a little too risky to put money into this area yet, or hire somebody. I'm not really sure if they're gonna be busy enough or they're gonna have to wear a hat.

And they're gonna be maybe really good at it, but we don't really have enough money for that. Or we might, but we're not really sure yet. Okay. Now, if you're running a program, you probably have been, in this, , place before where you had to make a decision. Especially in a time of growth or maybe you're trying to move forward and you're not growing with students as quickly as you would like, and you're thinking, well, do I put money into advertising?

, Do I hold some sort of event? Like what do I do? It's gonna cost money, and what if it doesn't get me what I need? It's a risk assessment,, which we all do do in our lives to some extent. . You might put the money in, you might hire the person. , You might hold the event, you might do whatever and commit to it.

Maybe you sign a contract with a new employee for a year. You're gonna have to pay them, um, $10,000 to work part-time for you, and they're gonna manage certain administrative communication things and you sign that contract with them. But you're not really sure yet how much it's gonna take off your plate.

You're not sure if it's gonna help with efficiency, yet you're, you know, it will little, but you're not sure if it will $10,000 worth, right? It's risk assessment and you have to make a decision at some point. Uh, and you don't necessarily have all of the predictions on how it's gonna come out. Okay? You just have to kind of forecast and take a educated guess based on what you know from before.

And how this has worked out in other places and other little bits of information you're getting right. Maybe things you're hearing from families, um, maybe things that they wish could be streamlined or are, uh, they wish they heard more or less, or, um, they wish they had this additional program. Right?

You're, you, you can't just react to one complaint or one uh, thing that you're hearing. Uh, you have to like, assess, well, how big of a problem is this? Um, do I need to put money into this problem? Is it, uh, a problem for multiple people or just one or two people? Right? The squeaky wheel gets greased. So sometimes you hear about, um, you hear from one person or one family, or one staff member and they're complaining a lot, and then you find out that really everyone else is fine with the situation and you can't be putting a ton of money into this particular thing right now, even though everyone might enjoy the, the, you know, benefit of it.

It's just not time right now, so you have to like, assess the risk. Okay. Um, now this can also happen with big decisions like maybe moving buildings, right? Um, I, I know of one situation where. There was some, uh, tension with a host building and some staff were feeling kind of like, well, I don't know if they really want us here.

I'm afraid to, you know, leave things up or put things, places. I feel like I'm walking eggshells at this host building and, um, you know, that's a very unpleasant way to feel. Right. And you get maybe two out of eight staff that. Might say, oh, they're, they're very sensitive, so they're complaining a little bit, they're not feeling comfortable, and that's not, you know, not good.

That's not, you don't want your teachers feeling that way or your staff feeling that way. So you take that into account and you listen to it. But moving buildings is a huge, massive undertaking involves a search, it involves an, uh, often a complete rearrangement of. Everything from where it is and which families might be attending, um, to furnishings, to storage, to rent, to cleaning.

Massive, huge disruption to budget stability. Okay. In this particular instance, it was only about the second year, so the relationship was new. There was still wrinkles being ironed out, and the stability between the growth of the program, multiple moves and um, the. A short period of time that the program had been in this location, there were still so many moving pieces that another move would have just thrown such a wrench into everything.

But at the same time, you know, there you have staff who are feeling uncomfortable and what do you do? Right? So there was a, there was a couple people whose initial gut reaction was, oh, we're not welcome here. We need to move. And then there were. Other people who were like, well, it's fine. Well, you know, we'll just work it out.

And then there was, you know, the third option, which ended up being the one that worked best and needed to happen was, was It's too risky. It's too risky. Like, there's so much at stake moving, there's so much at stake we could lose families. You know, there was so much at stake, and I think it was even, if I remember correctly, it was like after the enrollment for the following year had already was already in, it wasn't even, you know, but was, it was way too late in the year for this, unless it was absolutely 100% necessary.

Um, and what really needed to happen was a communication system needed to be fixed. There was not a clear communication back with the host building that people were feeling this way. Right. And when it, it turned out that what needed to happen was just a honest, clear communication, um, meeting with the right people, uh, which included some higher level leadership in both sides, sitting in the room together and saying, Hey.

You know, we know you guys welcomed us here and we're, you know, so glad that we're able to use the space. But we've been feeling a little bit of like, like we're bothering people and some of our teachers are feeling a little like they're walking on eggshells and it's kind of affecting the morale of our families.

And we just wanted to know if this was, you know, if you guys were aware of this and if this was something that you know you guys are feeling or if we're. Um, you know what, this is what's going on. You know, just being very honest about it. Well, it turned out that once the leaders of the host space, which was the church, um, heard this, they were like, oh, we, we didn't want you guys to feel that way.

But as often happens in these situations, the, um, the people who had approved, you know, the elder board or what, or the council board had, who had approved. Had, were not the people who were there every day, right? They weren't the ones who saw dirt on the rug or, you know, a puddle in the bathroom sink or fingerprints on the front window, or cared where the bulletin boards were hung there.

It wasn't them. That was the pastors, the, um, youth group leaders, the Sunday school leaders, right? Those were the people, the, the, uh, facilities people. They were the ones who were seeing that. And this message was really only coming from one person. That was just a little like, uh, you know, a little bit of complaint or a little bit of, oh, don't put that there, or, no, we need that space.

Um, and that's all it, that's what it was. Now this was a big deal in all of those people's feelings mattered, but there was another way to deal with it, and it was able to be resolved with the correct communication from the correct people and the problem. Eventually resolved and it wasn't a big deal.

Okay? In the long run it could have been a huge big deal. If the first couple of reactions of, oh my gosh, we gotta get outta here. We're not welcome here. This is terrible. We can't let our teachers feel like this had completely, um, uh, been the decision maker. Okay? And that's something that, uh, often happens when emotions run high, which is.

Human right. It happens all the time. Emotions run high. Somebody gets a little offended. You get overwhelmed by maybe what you're ask being asked to do. And the first reaction is just like, I don't wanna be in this situation. Like, let's get outta this situation. Right? Um, that's very common, but that's where that ability to see risk and be objective can be very like, wait, let's look at this close more closely.

There's a huge amount of risk involved here if we have to make. A, a knee jerk reaction to this. Let's make sure that we've looked at all of the pieces. All of the pieces which include the people's emotions, includes everyone's feelings and morale. Huge variables that are extremely important, but there's also stability and sustainability and all these other pieces.

If there's any way we can fix this problem in a more sustainable, uh, way more stable way. Let's make sure that we've looked at that. Okay. So that was an example of risk assessment. Um, now in that particular case, it was able to get worked out. It's possible that, you know, you approach and the, I know of a similar situation where the host building was like, Nope, sorry.

Like, we just don't think this is a good fit. And that was the response instead of, oh, we didn't want you guys to feel that way. Right? And then it involved a move, which was, you know, a lot for the program. So. But sometimes you don't have a choice, but other times there is a choice. There's an in between, there's a third option.

Okay, now that's one of, that's one. Option where there's like a, there's, that's one thing where there's like a problem. Um, and it's kind of a reactive risk assessment, but there's also, you know, proactive risk assessment, like I was talking about before, where you're trying to decide whether to invest in a new staff member or expand a program or at a grade level or, um, you know, maybe, uh, sign up for a, a service or something that's gonna cost some money.

So risk assessment is something that takes, um, looking backwards, looking forward. Taking all the information that's there right now, looking for gaps in your information and making an educated guess as to whether a risk, a financial risk, a staffing risk, a growth risk, a move risk, right? Something that can be risky, that's gonna throw a wrench into things you don't know.

The risk is that you don't know how it's gonna turn out. You don't know, right? So you're having to make an educated guess as to whether this risk is worth it for whatever it is your goal is. Okay? So since I just said goal. Strategy involves all of this. So strategy means that you need to be able to look behind and look ahead, set your goals, and then take a reasonable, um, plan, a sustainable step-by-step plan to get to a goal.

A lot of times a goal is sustainability, it is stability, right? That is one of the major goals that usually underlies specific goals. That a strategic plan might have, um, you know, might be expand a program that might be one of the strategic plan goals, but beneath that might be sustainability and stability.

Or it might not be, it might be missional, right, but your mission is gonna fall flat on its face possible probably if you don't have sustainability. Sustainability and stability in there somewhere. Um, you know, if you just focus on mission without all of those practical pieces, uh, you know, that's usually not, it doesn't last for too long, right?

So you need to have that in there somewhere. Okay, so that, I'll come back to talking about how the board and the executive director interact with that part of it. But let's talk about resource allocation for a second. This is probably, um, you know, it's right there next to risk assessment. And what I mean by resource allocation is it, it's a, it's kind of related concept, I suppose, in the sense of where do you put things when Okay.

And how do you strategize for that? Um, but it may not have a whole lot of risk attached necessarily, but it's kind of looking at that idea in, um, just from a different angle. So resource allocation is, uh, like, okay, how much. I'm gonna just use, uh, money terms because that's usually what what we're talking about, right?

Um, it can be like space or you know, size of classes and stuff like that. But when we're talking about resources, a lot of times we're talking about money. 'cause that's the resources we have as you have your resources and you're allocating them. So where do you put how much? There's, you have to be able to see where the big picture.

Is right. You have to see those, those, uh, pockets of, of, uh, impact for your program of like staff morale. Staff turnover. We don't want staff turnover. We're trying to avoid staff turnover, um, you know, training and all the things that go into your staff, which by the way are another resource. So you're allocating that resource also.

Right? If you can get. Dedicated people who love working for you, who know what it is you want them to do, who have the resources that they need as far as supplies and curriculum and training and support, that's a huge, huge benefit for, for your programs sustainability. And it really increases the quality of your program.

Okay? Now all of those things usually involve money. So where do you put the money? And this might be administrative positions. It's. Teaching positions, when do you hire an aide? Which class do you give an aide? Do you take an aide and allocate them across certain classes? Maybe where the younger children are and the teacher needs more like logistical support or reading and math support.

'cause the kids are younger. Um, you know, what about, uh. Support for administration, right? When do you hire somebody? How much do you pay them? How many hours are they gonna work? Should they wear an extra hat for a while? This is all resource allocation. You might say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hire a secretary.

I really need help with all these time consuming things. Um, you know, secretarial sorts of things, printing sorts of things. I really need help with that. It's so time consuming. This is a common thing. You're maybe for second, third year. As you're growing a bit and you're kind of wearing all the hats yourself, this is one of the first ones you wanna take off and hand to somebody.

Okay? That's, you make, you have to make both a risk and a resource, uh, you know, allocation kind of assessment. Is it time to do this? I might have to just suck it up and keep the hat on for one more year, because if I can do that, then the next year we're, we're doing really well with our enrollment, we're gonna have the money, we can hire somebody.

Or maybe let's just hire someone who can work. From home or you know, just pop in for a couple hours a week and it'll just take a lot off my plate. I'll just pay them hourly. Then you might get to a point, um, where you say, okay, well now I need an aide and I need secretarial help. Gee, I wonder if the aide could also be the secretary.

'cause they're not actually gonna be busy all day helping with the kids. But I don't have enough to hire two different people. So what if I hired someone who could do both? Okay, well that's might be a good idea, right? Or it might not be a good idea, right? You might need somebody who's very administrative and detail oriented to do your secretarial help.

Maybe has good communication skills, can like write up your, your newsletters or organize your student information system. That might not be the same skillset you need out of your, uh, person who's good at working with kids. Okay? So you have to risk assess, you have to resource allocate, and you have to say, well, how much money do I have here in my budget?

And am I, how do I distribute it to get the best, most efficient, most sustainable staffing for my program? Um. You might do this with higher administrative tasks. When do you hire out HR help? Do you hire somebody? Do you get a program? What about bookkeeping? What about accounting? Right. I always advise that you budget to hire out those higher skilled things because they're, you don't wanna do 'em wrong and they take a higher skill level to actually do correctly, uh, you know, things like running, not running payroll, but like the actual HR part.

Um, making sure that it's done right, like tax withholding and stuff like that in accounting. Um. But then there's, you know, mid levels of that where it's either just really time consuming or it takes a skill level and you have to decide, okay, and you might need someone to just man the door and help with the kids and also do secretarial.

There might be a time when one person can wear all those hats. There might be a time when you need two people working fewer hours each, right? So that's the resource allocation, but it also is how much you pay yourself, how much do you pay, uh, you know, some, maybe a, some sort of program supervisor or administrative director.

Well, what's your entire budget look like? How much are your teachers getting paid? How much are your aides getting paid? How many kids are signing up? Do you have a wait list? Um, you know, are you spending enough on training? Are you able to pay your rent? Do you have any surprises coming down the line with.

Uh, you know, you're, do you need to increase your cleaning budget? I try to give you all of the things that I've experienced that I didn't budget properly in the beginning, that I learned to budget now. And I tell people, you know, just budget for this in the beginning because you don't wanna have to like go back and try to find this, this money later.

It's, it's easier to just set up, expect it from the beginning. So that's why I'm throwing thing those things out there. But, um, there's this like ongoing. A resource allocation that you have to kind of feel out, and it can take a level of intuition as well as just what the numbers say. Right? And you have to be able to combine those two things because you're also pulling in skill levels and the gifts that people have.

You have somebody who's, uh, you know, just not very good at something like. Maybe they're not super detail oriented and it takes 'em twice as long to, or technology, you know, they're technologically impaired like me. And if I feel like it takes me twice as long to do detail oriented sort of things as someone else who could just boom, boom, boom, they just knock it out so fast.

'cause they're very good at reading all the lines and you know, doing all the things. Um, they can do something in two hours that would take me five hours. Right? So yes, I absolutely should be hiring that out because it's not. That's not something the way that I should be spending my time, right? 'cause I'm just not very good at it.

So that's, again, it's resource allocation. Now, what is that skill level worth is that, is that someone who's highly trained in hr, even just a little trained in hr? You know, human resources might, um, might need to be paid $25 an hour, where a 17 year. Uh, who is just helping with resource re recess and lunch duty.

Um, can get paid, you know, $14 an hour to be an aid. You don't wanna be paying the teenager $25 an hour and or the HR person $14 an hour, right? You wanna specialize, okay? And just give them the hours they need and pay them at the rate that they're, they're worth on the market. Okay? This is emotions aside.

It's what they're worth in the market and. You're resource allocating when you make those decisions. Okay. Now to pull all this together, we have risk assessment and resource allocation, right? And I talked a bit about strategy. Now usually the executive director who's overseeing all the staffing and the hiring, right?

They're writing up people's job descriptions. They need to know who does what, how many hours they're working, how much they're supposed to get paid. They're making that decision. And you don't want people sitting around board. You don't want people, um, you know, not. Having anything to do. But you also don't want people who are getting paid to work 14 hours a week.

15 hours a week, and they're getting, they're actually working 30 hours a week. Right. You don't, you need to be aware of all of that. Right. So it's usually the executive director, 'cause they're responsible for all of the staffing, all the writing jobs, descriptions, and all of the, um, the, the budget allocation, where the money is going, right.

And whether it's coming in, uh, whether enrollment is. Is high enough? Is it gonna be high enough to be able to fund the budget, the planning budget? Okay. Now what they're shooting for is sustainability. Okay? Now, if you're in a non-profit, the board is also is responsible for the mission in the sense that they need to make sure that there's a strategy, that the mission gets delivered, and.

Part of their responsibility for that is making sure there's a compliant, legal, transparent organization, that there's an executive director who knows that this is their job, that they're competent to do that job, and the board is approving a strategic plan because they are responsible for making sure that there is a plan and approving it and saying, yes, everybody, the executive director is doing a good job.

They're hiring. Well, they're staffing. Well, we know this because we assessed our stakeholders, which is our families, our staff, maybe any donors, right? And they seem happy with what we're doing. Or we saw some discontent, we saw some problems, uh, you know, maybe something that wasn't getting done that should have been getting done.

Um, people who feel like they're maybe not getting paid enough, but they're working so much, the board needs to be responsible for seeing these areas that could cause, uh, problems in the mission of the organization. Um, either huge problems or, you know, like there's no safety program. We got a liability issue or, uh, you know, discontent with the program.

It's not delivering. Um, there's not enough staffing. People are worn out. The building isn't happy with the. You know, the host building isn't happy and we're gonna have to move. Okay. The but what the reality is, the board is probably not gonna do the actual work of the strategic plan 'cause it's very time consuming.

Um, but they need to be involved enough that they know what's happening and how it's happening in the sense that stakeholders are being assessed. The information is being gathered. They know what's being asked. They've looked at the results, and they can see any red flags or any major areas that need to be improved.

They've worked with the executive director in that, and they're able to say, okay, working together through conversations and meetings while we're working on the strategic plan, here's. We're hearing what you wanna work on. We approve of what you are gonna work on. We're approving the strategic plan that says, you know, these three or four things are the top areas we're gonna improve.

These are the things we're doing well, and they know how and who and when this is going to get played out, the plan is gonna get played out. Okay? The executive director is working closely with the board to make sure that that overall assessment is being done. Those priorities are being, um, targeted and everybody knows who their who and when, and what is going to be done, accomplished to accomplish those goals.

It's realistic. It's feasible. It's, it's been thoroughly thought of, okay. Which is why it's important that that executive director who is working with the board. Is able to risk assess and resource allocate, and I'll just throw in there one more time. Is, has a good relationship with the board and this and the board itself has good communication relationship and they have good relationship with their staff too.

So that if there's something like the story I told earlier about, you know, a, a staff member complaining, a couple staff members complaining about, uh, feeling like they're walking on eggshells in their host building, right? If something like that pops up. Either formally through assessment or listening to people or informally just through, you know, through the grapevine.

This, if that pops up, that the executive director knows how to risk assess and resource allocate and say, okay, we need to pour a little bit more resources into this because it's, it's, we, it's worthwhile, or we need to do or not do this, or we need to, I need you guys to help me brainstorm because this is gonna be way too risky to try to fix the problem with this.

Okay. It might be like, you know, I remember another instance where someone was like, well, let's hire a consultant. Well, the consultant was, was like, that they were looking at, was like, it, I don't remember. It was, it was like close to $10,000 or something for like a day or two. And the, the, they hadn't looked at all of the resources that they already had available to them.

Like there, there was a whole process. That they could easily do for a fraction of that or almost nothing if they utilized the resources that they already had and the staff that they already had. And, you know, they were looking at paying somebody almost as much as one of their staff members was getting paid in a year to do this.

And that just wasn't, you know, was not a wise resource allocation, um, when the resources they had weren't being used. Well, there wasn't enough money to just do that. Right. Especially for the result that they were gonna possibly get. So this was like another instance where the people who see that need to be able to speak up and say, Hmm, guys, I don't, this is, um, this isn't a good idea.

Why aren't we using that resource? Or, you know, we shouldn't be moving 'cause we haven't tried talking to them yet. Right. Like, you have to be able to have that like, um. Honesty. And you know, in a previous episode I talked about Patrick Lencioni's, uh, term about mining for conflict, where you, you have someone in the room who says, okay, does anyone have any concerns with this?

'cause this is a big cash outlay, or, um, has anyone have any other ideas for solving this problem? Or have you checked with these other people? Right? And you draw out maybe the quiet person or whatever, and you get. You listen and you are able to have those honest conversations. Okay? So all these things work together.

Okay? So to pull all this together, um, somebody in the higher leadership, usually the executive director and the staffing operational side, who knows the enrollment, knows the admissions, knows the staffing inside out, knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done, and how much it costs, right?

Money coming in, money going out. What's going to probably happen in the next year or two? What's happened in the last year or two needs to be able to risk assess, resource, allocate, and they need to be able to strategize. And that's a really important, but sometimes invisible, hard to pinpoint skill. Okay.

But it's very important. They need to be trusted by the board, but they also have to work with the board because they need to be able to do that and then communicate it in collaboration. With maybe a, A committee or something, but in collaboration, but ultimately communicate it clearly to the board for the purpose of strategizing and strategic planning.

And the board needs to be able to trust them, but also pay enough attention that they really understand what it is that is going on and how the decisions were made without micromanaging. Okay. So honest, clear communication among all these people. Very important foundational bedrock thing. Okay. And, um, understanding what it is that each per, each group is responsible for, but also very important that someone understands the board respects and the staff respects that this skillset is very important.

Okay? When it's not there, you end up with too many people collaborating on the same things. It takes too long. It's inefficient. Um, you end up with people bored. You end up with money getting thrown into places that it's not producing. It's not, it's just, you know, you're paying somebody or a consultant or a program running a program that's not, that's not worth it.

It's not paying for itself. Or you're paying a person who's not really producing enough like, you know, for the program and the money could be better spent elsewhere when there isn't someone keeping tabs on all of that, that kind of thing ends up happening, which impacts your. Sustainability and your stability and possibly your, you know, oh, well, I shouldn't say possibly, I should say like, through either your actual finances, your money, um, or possibly through your morale of your staff or, you know, turnover or any number of those things.

Or family contentment. There's multiple things that go into that sustainability and, uh, someone who's not keeping tabs on all of that. Uh. And that, that when that isn't happening, that ends up, uh, possibly being the, the bad side effects of that not happening. Okay. So I hope that made sense and um, just be aware of that.

Okay.

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