Are your private school’s practices hurting your relationships with parents and students?  Imagine yourself in this scenario. You need to buy a mini-van for transporting your children and carpooling. You go to the dealership and they have beautiful gray minivans. In your opinion, gray minivans are harder to see on the road and the more attractive gray van isn’t worth the chance of an accident even when the increased chance is small. For you to buy, they need to offer a different color.

The dealer justifies his practices. He says, “Studies show that there aren’t more accidents and you shouldn’t worry about it.”

You ask, “Why do you only buy gray mini-vans?”

The car dealer says, “Because we believe that it is a good choice for families who want an attractive car, but need the transportation ability of the mini-van. He continues, “With the sharp, attractive looking gray color, they can have both – attractive and a mini-van. It’s what they need.”

Like this dealer, some private schools have been unaccommodating to some of the needs of the full-pay parents. The schools feel they just don’t need it. To survive, schools will need to remove at least some of its self-righteous practices and get tuned in to the choices of the full-pay customer.

When the customers aren’t being served by these practices, leaders need to take notice and remove rigid practices or thinking that doesn’t have anything to do with achieving their mission.

Here are a couple of real life examples. If you look closely at your institution; you will uncover some similar attitudes, practices or behaviors. They are hurting your relationship with your current families which has an impact on your brand and your ability to attract full-pay customers.

In a particular lower school, there was a rule that once students left the building at the end of the day, they could not return to the building. One day a 3^rd grader left her science assignment in her cubbie and she needed it to do her homework. So she returned to the school. One of teachers saw the student and chastised her. She stated that she may get everything that she wants at home, but at school she needs to be more responsible and take the consequences of her action, forgetting her homework in this case. The teacher sent her away.   This wasn’t a safety issue; it was a bad attitude and a wrong practice.

The second scenario was in another lower school in which the parents at the end of the day would congregate outside of the school building, chatting with each other and arranging playdates or other social plans. The principal didn’t like them hanging around. He wanted them to go home immediately.   He sent a letter to the families saying that they were disturbing the teachers as they were leaving and destroying the grass.   The parents were quite annoyed and many teachers weren’t supportive of his letter either. Parents new some faculty were on their side. This was a control problem on the part of the division head.

A third scenario is about a boarding school’s offering of parent-teacher conferences. Parents, some coming from 10,000 miles away, come in for a 15-minute meeting about their child. It was changed to 10 minutes. Think about this – $50,000 and you are only offered a 10-minute parent-teacher conference.   You don’t build ecstatic parents this way.

Every school has these types of occurrences. None of these are mission or safety driven. Fixing them will enable schools to keep parents partnering on the bigger matters, such as, why does my child have to do athletics or physical education?   Or why does every student have to participate in….? It will also keep them pleased with you and more willing to share their excitement with your prospects and on your social media. Just making a few adjustments to some of your unnecessary practices or adding a few more customer centric practices can help you to build trust and brand.