EXPLO Elevate shares good ideas, practices, and wisdom to help
schools and their communities flourish.

Dear Friend,

Where a School Is and What It Desires to Become: Building a Progress Culture

Ross offers us a compelling metaphor for educational leadership: the rubber band that allows vision and innovation to pull ahead while maintaining essential institutional connections. How can schools create cultures that embrace progress without losing their core identity? Ross explores the delicate balance between resisting all change and chasing every trend, presenting a third path for schools that want meaningful evolution while preserving what matters most.

Problems of Practice in Action: Leadership Reenactment as a Board Development Tool

Back in January I found myself sitting next to Emily Charton, the head of the Rashi School. We had never met and soon found ourselves deep in conversation about schools. She was thinking about how to help her board better understand the complexity of the challenges she and her leadership team were facing. I shared an idea for an exercise she could do with her board. Emily thought that the recommendation just might work. I followed up a few months later and learned that not only was the exercise a success, but she’s now planning to do something similar with her board every March. 

The Business of Auxiliary Programs

In many schools, revenue from auxiliary services is making up a greater percentage of the operational budget than philanthropic dollars. The dollars generated by AUX services have become a critical piece of the budget for many schools and yet … I’m surprised how many schools only have a foggy notion of the economics of their auxiliary services.

Deaning is Just Hard: Some Advice

Bridget Johnson, founder of the Deans Roundtable, David Torcoletti, and I discuss what it means to think like a Dean, why so many people are so often so unhappy with Deans, and why being a Dean can be like conducting an orchestra where half the orchestra doesn’t know how to play the instrument on their laps.

Meet Our New Senior Consultant: John Barrengos, Ed.D.

I’m thrilled to announce that John Barrengos will be joining EXPLO Elevate as a senior consultant. John works with school leaders and boards focusing on enrollment management, advancement, and finances to ensure school sustainability and health.

After mastering credit risk for 32 cultural and educational institutions during his five-year commercial banking career, John made a bold pivot—returning to his alma mater, Moses Brown, as Director of Development and Alumni Relations. His independent school journey has taken him to the Masters School where he was Associate Director at CITYterm to Director of Summer Programs at Miss Porter's School. As Head of School at The Independent Day School, John restructured the middle school program, extensively renovated the physical plant, refinanced the school’s debt, exceeded budget targets, and substantially added to the school’s reserves. As Director of Admission and Financial Aid at The Putney School, he lowered the acceptance rate by 13%, increased the yield rate, and increased net tuition by 60%. He has worked with a number of schools on turnarounds.  

He’s served on boards ranging from Stoneleigh Burnham, to the Small Boarding School Association, and the Association of Independent Schools Admissions Professionals (AISAP). A graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, John holds a doctorate in Organizations and Leadership and earned his BA from Tufts where he sang with the Beelzebubs. He’s a life long independent school person who understands the academic, co-curricular, enrollment, auxiliary, and business sides of the house. We simply couldn’t be more excited to have him join the team. Read more about John here.

Becoming Good at Conversation Takes Practice. Lots and Lots of Practice

All the Conversations that Kids Are Missing is an excellent article by Alison Woods Brooks, professor at Harvard Business School and the author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. Brook writes about how a screen-saturated life is preventing young people from “figuring out how to unlock the rewards of conversation”, which “may be the most important project of childhood development…” I think it’s a great piece for a common read for faculty and parents that could then be followed by some powerful gatherings focused on developing the art of conversation.

Alien Zoo, ASU Dreamscape Learn, Making Online Learning Experiential

A couple of years ago I met with a member of the ASU Dreamscape Learn team and was able to dig into their virtual reality lab, Alien Zoo, which transports students to “an orbiting wildlife sanctuary for endangered life-forms from the far corners of the universe.” I was a bit taken aback as 25+ years ago at EXPLO we developed a hands-on alien biology course that sounded eerily familiar to the concept of Alien Zoo. What we didn’t have was acclaimed Hollywood exec Walter Parkes, along with Steven Speilberg helping build our alien world. This VR world is now a virtual lab for the bio department at ASU and it’s been a highly effective learning tool. They are producing more online labs that are genuinely experiential in nature. There are some additional benefits such as facilities use (labs are expensive to build) and far more flexible scheduling. Last I spoke with Dreamscape Learn the thought was to push out the work beyond ASU to enable other schools to come up with their own Dreamscape offerings.

What Could Personalized Learning Look Like? Matter and Space Imagines

What could personalized learning look like in the age of AI? That’s what Paul LeBlanc, the former president of Southern New Hampshire University, MOOC pioneer George Siemens, and clinical psychologist Tanya Gamby are asking. They recently launched the website of their new company, Matter and Space, including a couple of highly produced videos about the promise of the new learning platform they plan to launch this fall. Whether the promise of Matter and Space lives up to the hype, I think it’s worth keeping it and other AI driven learning tools on the radar. We’ve reached a point where if your school is not thinking about the use of AI in a strategic way both for its use in teaching and learning as well as administrative support, it’s time. 

ESAs + Vouchers: Forces That Will Impact Enrollment at Public and Independent Schools

Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) are proliferating and more and more families are choosing to use them to create rich homeschooling options for their children as they turn away from public and independent schools. Mike Goldstein, serial educational entrepreneur and researcher talks with Michael Horn about the demand side of families using ESAs. You can listen to their conversation here.

And because two things can be true at once … Texas is enacting a $1 billion dollar school voucher program providing up to $10,000 per year per student ($30,000 for students with disabilities) to use for private school enrollment including virtual learning. There is also a provision for $2000 to go to homeschooling students. The program is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2030 and religious schools, in particular, are anticipating growth.

I recently stumbled across a piece by psychologist Peter Gray who was writing about Wellesley professor, Markella B. Rutherford’s book, Adult Supervision Required, which explores the changing nature of parent’s views on the supervision of children. I remember my mother allowing me to walk home from school my first day of kindergarten – only after I heatedly made my case that I was old enough to do so. Thankfully she acquiesced. I still remember that day vividly. I felt so much more grown up. I don’t know if my mother had been reading old issues of Parents magazine, but here’s a snippet from Gray’s substack article: 

“An article in Parents, in 1956, expressed approval of a mother’s decision to acquiesce to her 5-year-old’s desire to walk to school by himself, about 4 blocks from home. The article made it clear that a child old enough for kindergarten is old enough to find his or her own way to and from school and can be trusted to make that trip without an adult. The article implicitly judged the child’s desire for such independence to be healthy and normal, something the parent should encourage.”

That’s it for this edition. 

The school year will be over before you know it. I hope you can find many ways to savor the journey to June.

Moira

Have a project brewing in the back of your mind? Let's chat. Even if it's just an initial thought, a quick call could help us explore possibilities you haven't considered. No pressure – just good thinking with colleagues who deeply understand the independent school landscape. Check out our website for more on what we bring to the table.

Join us

Moira will be facilitating the Case Study Chair Chat for trustees for the Independent School Chairpersons Association

June 4, 2025 | Noon

Join EXPLO Senior Consultant, David Torcoletti, where he will be a featured speaker at the Deans Roundtable Conference, June 23 - 26, 2025 at New England Innovation Academy.

Moira will be presenting with Dr. Amanda Packard and Amy Jolly at The Association of Boarding Schools Conference in Boston in November. They will present on Learning in the Age of AI: How is learning changing as a result, and why are boarding schools uniquely positioned to meet this challenge?

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