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News & Views - Feb,
1999 Issue #56
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Small Boarding Schools Association
Annual Conference
March 4 – 6, 1999
By: Jodi Tuttle, Roving Reporter
435-656-1251
This unique and extremely worthwhile conference was held at Tallulah Falls
School in Tallulah Falls, Georgia. The Conference agenda was full of information useful to admission directors and boarding school
personnel. Topics included common applications, recruitment, advisor/advisee systems and transitioning students from therapeutic programs
to the more traditional boarding schools. Most people agreed that this is one of the best conferences they have attended in the whole
year.
One workshop of great interest focused on Ethics of Recruitment led by Paul
Stockhammer, Headmaster of Catherine Cook School in Chicago. This is a major area of concern for all boarding schools and particularly
for small schools. The small boarding schools are generally the ones that have a niche marketing area that includes something unique
or special to the particular school. While the pressure is on all admission directors to fill beds, he/she also has the responsibility
to accept applicants who fit the school profile. The effort to balance these two areas sometimes places an admission director in a
position of needing to admit a student who might run the risk of dismissal. How ethical is it for an admission director to accept
a student, know that the student and the school could possibly be damaged if the student is dismissed? Additional stress on the admission
director occurs when the school does not offer a refund policy and the family stands to lose $15,000 to $25,000 in tuition that has
been paid for a student at risk.
What makes this conference so great is that the conference is casual, intimate,
low key and filled with relevance for educational consultants and small boarding school personnel. The Small Boarding School Association
began in 1987 with a few educators who gathered at Hoosac School in New York to talk about common concerns for schools with less than
200 boarding students and less than 250 total students. The idea was to have a place to gather where the cost of attendance for small
schools could be affordable. In the beginning, attendees stayed in dorms vacated by the students over spring or winter break and all
meals were served in the dining room. Nowadays, attendees stay in low cost hotels instead of dorms, but the essence of the conference
has not changed.
During the final business meeting, it was noted that while this conference
was started by more traditional boarding schools, there is now a large attendance by Emotional Growth and Therapeutic programs and
schools. These schools have discovered the great opportunities for networking and sharing information with traditional boarding school
where they would like to send some of their students when they have finished. It was noted that there is a tremendous need for a gathering
such as this for Therapeutic and Emotional Growth schools. The question arose, “Will the new National Association of Therapeutic Schools
and Programs fill this need? Hopefully, it will! Congratulations to Bryan Green and Tallulah Falls School and also Karl Sjolund from
Virginia Episcopal School, President of SBSA, for producing another great conference! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again
next year at Forman School in Connecticut.
Copyright © 1999, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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