That confidence lasted until the first day of school. Very quickly, the reality set in: I was expected to build months of lessons from scratch, with little guidance beyond a general sense of the school’s mission and the handful of texts assigned. What had felt like freedom became, almost overnight, an overwhelming burden.

This experience is familiar to many teachers. Even at well-established classical schools like mine, new hires often start out with few curricular resources. At a high level, the school may have a clear vision—the liberal arts, the Great Books, the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty—but in practice, there is often no fully articulated set of guiding questions, content sequences, unit plans, model lessons, or objectives to orient and direct the day-to-day. Instead, the curriculum frequently resides in the minds of experienced teachers who have built their courses year by year through personal effort and ingenuity.

While this approach can work, especially in a school’s early years, it places an extraordinary burden on teachers that is difficult to sustain over time. It also creates instability. Each new hire must effectively recreate the curriculum, and each teacher’s departure risks taking hard-won knowledge with it. The result can be inconsistency in instruction, difficulty onboarding new faculty, and, not infrequently, teacher burnout and attrition.

Over time, what begins as admirable flexibility becomes a structural liability. Without a clearly defined and documented curriculum, even strong schools struggle to sustain excellence or scale their programs effectively. And yet, despite recognizing these challenges, many school leaders delay necessary curriculum work. It is difficult to organize, difficult to delegate, and difficult to fit into the already full demands of teaching and administration.

What does it look like when a school chooses to address this challenge directly? Cathedral High School (CHS) in Houston, Texas, offers a compelling answer.

Over the past year, I have come to know CHS as an exceptional school marked by a clear identity and a deeply rooted sense of mission. Led by Dr. Alexis Kutarna, CHS is the flagship academy of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, an expression of Roman Catholicism distinguished by its Anglican heritage, liturgy, and traditions. The school’s academic program stands on the Ordinariate’s four pillars: sacred worship, sacred wisdom, sacred music, and sacred art. In addition to providing an authentic Catholic education in the classical liberal arts tradition and handing on the patrimony of English Christianity, CHS seeks the renewal of Christian culture in our present age.

From its earliest days, CHS has invested in curriculum design as a core component of the school’s work. Its curriculum committee draws together key administrators, department chairs, and lead teachers who have an incredible level of subject-matter expertise and a shared philosophical vision for Catholic education.

Now only in its fourth year of operation and preparing to graduate its first class, CHS is well advanced in documenting its curriculum. With an eye toward its own continued growth, as well as the growth of other Ordinariate schools for which it serves as a model, CHS has made a deliberate decision to complete the work it began in its early years. This has meant revising initial curricular documents, refining and expanding them, and ensuring that all courses are clearly articulated and aligned in both aim and depth across every discipline and grade level.

Arcadia had the privilege of supporting CHS in this effort by helping to structure and guide the process. In close partnership with Dr. Kutarna, we designed a six-month project to support the faculty in developing and refining their curricular documentation. The work began with a thorough audit of existing materials to identify areas that were underdefined or misaligned. From there, our Academy Operations consulting team facilitated weekly working sessions with each department chair to set goals, track progress, and refine curricular content. Along the way, we provided detailed editorial and strategic feedback to ensure clarity, rigor, coherence, and alignment with the school’s mission.

The result, to be completed this June, is a fully documented, integrated, and scalable academic program, including guiding documents for each discipline, scopes and sequences, and detailed syllabi and unit guides for each course.

What made this project especially meaningful was not only the quality of the final product but also the way it was accomplished. Because the work was done in close collaboration with CHS’s faculty, it strengthened their sense of ownership over the curriculum and deepened their ability to articulate and carry forward the school’s vision. In the process, CHS also cultivated leaders among the faculty, built confidence in undertaking complex institutional projects, and further established itself as a model for the renewal of Catholic education.

Though deeply important, it is easy for schools to delay this kind of investment in curriculum. As Stephen Covey famously articulated in the important-urgent matrix, the most important work is often not the most urgent and is therefore easily neglected. When a program is functioning well enough, documentation and alignment fall into that “important but not urgent” category in quadrant 2, consistently deferred in favor of more immediate operational demands. Yet it is precisely the non-urgent work of curriculum planning and design that enables schools to become excellent and enduring institutions.

The experience of the new teacher, standing on the first day of school with little more than a stack of books and a vague sense of direction, should not be a defining feature of otherwise excellent schools. What begins as an opportunity for creativity too often becomes an unsustainable burden, one that signals not strength but the absence of shared structure. Schools that take the time to document and align their curriculum relieve this burden, replacing uncertainty with clarity and individual improvisation with a coherent, mission-aligned program. In doing so, they not only support their teachers more effectively, but also build the conditions for consistency, continuity, and lasting excellence.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote a famous essay in which he described being suddenly arrested by the beauty of the furrows plowed across bending hills during a walk through the English countryside. Quick to marvel at a paradox, he reflected on the one before him: straight lines, carved into the soil by farmers with dogmatic persistence, yielded into graceful sweeps and bows as they traced the contours of the land. “Rigidity yielding a little, like justice swayed by mercy, is the whole beauty of the earth. The cosmos is a diagram just bent beautifully out of shape. Everything tries to be straight; and everything just fortunately fails.”

This image is the heart of Furrows, the new podcast series on Schooling America launched by Arcadia Education’s Director of Search Operations and Partnerships, Ryan Klopack, in collaboration with CLT’s Director of Classical Baccalaureate, Alex Julian. As longtime colleagues and co-leaders in classical education, they became convinced that the best part of working in these schools was not merely the philosophy or pedagogical techniques, but the stories of transformation they encountered at the hand of the plow in both students and colleagues alike. Virtue, truth, goodness, and beauty are all well and good, but classical education is, at best, the pursuit of pious abstractions unless those pursuing them are themselves formed by these ideals. The word must become flesh.

Ryan and Alex are joined by Associate Vice President for Hillsdale K–12, Katy O’Toole; SCL CFO Matt Skinner; University of Dallas Vice President of Enrollment Andrew Ellison; Iliad Athletics founder Patrick Whalen; and many others. Whether arguing with atheists in a post-communist spiritual wasteland, converting from Hinduism to Christianity, or encountering the divine in the midst of combat, the pursuit of truth leads to endlessly surprising stories.

However, it also stories like these: CLICK HERE

Be sure to subscribe and follow Arcadia Education and catch the latest episodes of the Furrows at the links below:

Arcadia Education YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@arcadiaeducation215/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=2

Furrows on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3RJEEn9bnpFYDNCcMijct1

Furrows on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/schooling-america/id1717554058

Whenever an ancient Greek city-state or one of her greatest citizens had an important decision to make, the Oracle at Delphi was consulted. This required a journey to the slopes of Mount Parnassus, a ritual cleansing, a ritual sacrifice, and finally, great stores of wisdom and patience: the responses of the Oracle (a high priestess of the god Apollo) could be challenging to interpret. Students of ancient history in classical schools can probably recall what happened to the king who was told that if he made war on Persia, “he would destroy a mighty empire.” The decisions a leader makes—or fails to make—in tending to a school’s organizational health are similarly consequential.

Ambitious city-states, erudite headmasters with lofty principles, passionate principals with big dreams, and nurturing leaders with huge hearts can all alike find themselves mired in organizational dysfunction of one sort or another, their vision ever beyond reach. The list goes on and on: poor planning, overly optimistic budgeting, lack of a unifying vision, cheap grace instead of honest accountability, weak operational discipline, ineffective meetings, focusing on what you’re good at instead of what must get done … is this what Christian schools are doomed to be? Lovable losers full of good intentions and right opinions that just can’t get out of second gear? Of course not—but organizational health is the narrow path by which few enter.

What is organizational health? Patrick Lencioni asserts that for an organization to be truly healthy, every member needs to first understand in depth the vision and precepts of their organization, and then live out their role in alignment with that vision. Moreover, every human system, “every policy, every program, every activity should be designed to remind [the faculty and staff] what is really most important” (The Advantage). We could say that organizational health is synonymous with integrity in the older sense of the word: being internally and externally consistent, coherent, and complete. As my friend and decorated school leader Matt Skinner likes to say, organizational health means that you “know who you are, and act like it.”

Matt has tapped into ancient oracular tradition here: over the head of each supplicant approaching Apollo’s temple to seek the god’s wisdom, an inscription on the architrave proclaimed in capital letters: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ. Gnôthi seautón. “Know thyself.”

This is a profound warning. When we begin leading, the first strategy most of us employ is to try to figure it all out for ourselves. When that inevitably falls short, we beat ourselves up and try even harder. I know that was my approach. If I’m honest, when I was running a classical academy in Phoenix, I wanted to solve all highest order problems myself. Part of me wanted to “earn it;” part of me wanted to prove myself; part of me didn’t want to admit that sometimes I didn’t even know what questions to ask, or feared being exposed as an imposter, and felt that seeking counsel would be cheating or quitting. Whatever the reason, many of us have a strong aversion to admitting our ignorance and learning how to lead from others. If this is a hurdle you’ve still not cleared, you’re probably the type that has a hard time laughing at yourself. You’re being silly (that is, proud) and the best medicine is to have a good chuckle at yourself, then start reading books and asking questions. I recommend starting with Patrick Lencioni. He has devoted his career to systematizing the road to organizational health.

The prose in these books themselves, though, is the second hurdle classical school leaders often encounter. Leadership books are not great books; in terms of prose they rarely even approach good book status. Lencioni’s illustrative fables are, well, something that even he jokes about. One’s sense of intellectual gravity can be affronted by “self-help books” that seemingly mechanize the human experience with no sense for poetic insight. You’re not wrong per se, but demanding good prose from these texts is like asking for a yardstick to weigh a corndog. The correct yardstick, the proper rubric in this context, is this: trees are known by their fruit. If faithfully following the course laid out in a book brings about greater excellence in strategy, operations, and organizational health—if clarity and alignment increase over time—then the book has been a trustworthy guide, however humble its composition.

The first two hurdles come down to pride: admitting our need for their help, and then coming to terms with the authors and their style. The third hurdle differs; one could say it requires great stores of wisdom and patience. It’s a challenge to wade through a swamp of leadership books in search of not merely the odd pearl or nugget, but a coherent framework and new systems that you and your team will commit to following. “What if I’m reading the wrong book?” “If I can’t trust the caliber of the prose, how am I to judge the ideas themselves?”

If you haven’t started connecting with peers yet, this is the point at which to do it. No matter how much it wounds your pride, ask your peers, especially the ones you feel competitive with (preferably those in other markets), for their recommendations and advice. Ask your board members and key donors that have knowledge on this front. You’ll be amazed how they light up and are willing to share. It shows them your humility and a hunger for wisdom which they will love, not weakness and inadequacy as we often suspect. I’ll give my own starter list: The Advantage by Lencioni, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, Good to Great by Jim Collins, Crucial Conversations by Patterson et al, and Getting Things Done by David Allen.

“Know thyself.” One might add, or clarify: “Get over yourself, and then you’ll be free to start serving and leading others.” The adage may sound trite, but there is a reason some statements endure the test of time.

Sagrado Corazon (SC) had connected with Arcadia last year for support in moving their PreK-12 school to a classical Catholic liberal arts program. Our six-month working engagement, beginning in mid-January, had therefore landed me in the Southern Hemisphere and gotten me a hundred feet across that bridge by mid-February. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sagrado Corazon was already one of the most highly regarded schools serving this part of Colombia. They have a single-track PK through 12 program that is taught in full English immersion from grades K through 8. The school’s graduates have excelled in all fields—engineering, the liberal arts, business, communications, and so on—both at home and abroad. Many SC students have been accepted into Ivy League schools and other top-tier universities in America. But the faculty would say that their greatest strength, the heart of their school, is in the relationships they form with their students, and the relationships their students form with God and one another. This is a place where students are known, loved, and formed in faith.

So why mess with a good thing? Mr. Mauricio Vega, chair of the science department and faculty professional development, and Academic Coordinator Ana María Correa González, have been leading the charge to continually improve both faculty training and the curriculum. Mauricio’s studies in the Catholic intellectual tradition as a graduate student at the University of Dallas shaped his educational vision. As he explained to me, SC has no desire to change who they are as a community: rather, they want to become the richest, fullest, most complete version of the faithful Catholic community they already are. He believes that to do that, “We must elevate our curriculum through a deeper commitment to the arts of the trivium and quadrivium, the liberal arts that have shaped Catholic education for the better part of two millennia.” To be clear, our task was not to build an American curriculum for a school in Columbia. It was to build a Catholic classical curriculum in the Columbian tradition, one that traced the great conversation as it unfolded from antiquity to present day Columbia, using their literature, their poetry, and their history.

We began our journey by getting to know Sagrado Corazon, its leaders and faculty, its history, its daily schedule, philosophical and theological convictions, its curriculum, pedagogy, and purpose. The work was slow going. My week-long visit in February allowed me to observe every aspect of their academic program (it’s a rough life, but someone had to!). Once we sketched out the aim and requirements of the build, creation began with agreeing on the time allocations per subject (Will science need a block schedule? Will logic be one semester or two?) then on to curriculum design principles (Will literature and history focus on the same time period each year?). Our progress was not always linear. Finally we aligned on theological, philosophical, and teleological principles within each discipline (How best to embody the personalism that inspires their pedagogy?). Most of the time this meant arriving at an appreciation for the academy’s already well-elucidated position, but at times there was a need for deep collaboration and reflection. Once this arduous spadework was completed, compiling the text selections was relatively straightforward for the team.

Our team on this engagement was composed of three specialists: two veteran classical academic leaders turned Arcadia consultants, Mrs. Courtney Gunn and Mrs. Brittany Trevino, and Dr. Erik Ellis, assistant professor of Education and Classical Learning at the University of Dallas. Dr. Ellis’s expertise in classical education and the South American academic landscape were instrumental in tailoring the upper school curriculum to both the vision and the needs of Sagrado Corazon.

Classical education’s detractors have made much hay out of its alleged “rigidity” and oppressive Eurocentric power structures. This couldn’t be further from the truth: the liberal arts are those that make one free. An engaged, appreciative boots-on-the-ground cultural interchange with the gifted faculty of Sagrado Corazon drove that home. We weren’t there to transplant an American curriculum into a Colombian context. We were there to tend the unique human virtue already growing in Colombian soil. (Oh, and if you’re looking for cookie-cutter kids rigidly conformed to the zeitgeist, well, let’s just say you wouldn’t start your search at a thriving classical school.)

When the project is complete, SC will have a complete list of every ISBN for every course at every grade level, an implementation guide for phasing in the changes, a PK–12 scope and sequence, a two year professional development plan for faculty, and a curricular rationale document to make sure they have a record of why each choice was made. At this moment, Arcadia only has the last two documents to deliver, and the team at SC already has the first round of faculty trainings underway. It has been an honor and a joy to come alongside the SC team and build something beautiful for them that fulfilled their vision. Their passion and commitment to God and their students have inspired our team, and we look forward to following their progress for years to come.

There I am on the bridge. In the west, the green and gold central range of the Andes arches its back toward the sky. I hear that there above the cloud forests, in a treeless mountaintop preserve called the Paramo del Sol, plants called frailejones flourish that can be found in no other ecosystem. With eyes squinted, the brown and gold paramo could be mistaken for a cactus-covered hill in Arizona. But the frailejones that grow there are no cacti. These remarkable plants, instead of storing water away, gather it from passing clouds and release it through their roots into the soil. At their roots begin the streams which feed the rivers that nourish the jungles and valleys of all this lush land of Colombia.

So, what does it take to attract a great leader? My work leading Arcadia’s executive search team has shown me a few recurring themes. First, boards must articulate a compelling, inspiring mission. Many imagine that creating and upholding a clear mission is the head of school’s job. It isn’t. It’s the board’s most important responsibility. Transformational leaders, the kind boards dream of, are drawn first and foremost to a mission—not pay, facilities, or location. A board hires a leader to execute that mission, because great leaders don’t just get things done; they inspire those around them to be great, and that only happens by leading toward a unifying, inspiring vision. Unfortunately, many boards struggle to define this vision clearly. When boards take Arcadia’s health assessment and are asked, “How many board members can repeat the school’s mission verbatim?” the answer is almost always “zero.” If you want a great leader, gather your board now and figure this out.

Second, boards must be healthy. This means they know their purpose, are well-organized to carry it forward, are motivated and engaged, and are unified. If a governing board acts like an advisory board, or an advisory board oversteps its role, friction with the head of school often follows, sometimes spilling over to faculty and staff. Even if a board knows its purpose, disorganization—poor meetings, unclear decisions, or lack of support—can frustrate a leader hired to execute the mission. If any board members are disengaged, it signals that greatness is optional, and the best leaders, who would never tolerate disengaged faculty, won’t accept it from a board.

Unity is particularly critical for a board’s health. Boards must do the work outlined in Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team—building trust, embracing healthy conflict, ensuring commitment, upholding accountability, and focusing on results—or they’ll never be unified. A divided board is vulnerable to triangulation from parents or faculty, which undermines leaders. No great leader wants to constantly look over their shoulder, worried an angry parent will ambush them via the board.

Finally, great leaders often ask how boards will support their growth. The best leaders always seek to improve. Boards must invest in the continued development of their head of school and themselves. Make this change now: set aside funds for coaching and education for your current or incoming leader, and insist they use those funds. Great leaders lead through the mission, build healthy organizations, and want to work for boards that share these principles.

Why These Assessments Matter

The Recruitment & Retention Health Assessments—one aimed at administrative leadership and the other at faculty—are designed to reveal strengths, expose gaps, and uncover misalignments between leadership intentions and faculty experiences.

These assessments go beyond surface-level feedback by evaluating specific components of the recruitment and retention cycle, including:

• Clarity: Are expectations, roles, and the school’s mission clearly communicated?
• Sourcing & Attracting: How effective are recruitment strategies, and does the school stand out to prospective candidates?
• Vetting & Discerning: Are hiring decisions aligned with the school’s mission, culture, and long-term goals?
• Welcoming & Integrating: Do new hires feel supported and smoothly integrated into the school community?
• Supporting & Reviewing: How well does the school nurture faculty development, provide feedback, and recognize excellence?
• Commending & Removing: Are achievements recognized authentically? Are underperforming staff addressed in a fair, timely manner?

A Dual-Perspective Approach

The Administrator Version of the assessment focuses on institutional strategies and processes, allowing leaders to reflect on how well their systems align with the school’s mission and support faculty success. Questions dive deep into the clarity of hiring standards, the effectiveness of sourcing pipelines, and whether performance expectations are communicated and upheld.

The Faculty Version gathers insights directly from teachers, revealing whether their experiences match their leaders’ intentions. It captures valuable feedback on how well teachers feel supported, integrated, and recognized in their roles.

How School Leaders Can Use These Assessments

Identify Gaps and Misalignments

• Comparing the results from both surveys often reveals critical disconnects. For example, leaders may believe their onboarding process is comprehensive, but faculty feedback might indicate otherwise.

Refine Recruitment Strategies

• If questions about candidate sourcing and attracting reveal weak talent pipelines, leadership can prioritize partnerships with universities, educational networks, or community organizations aligned with the school’s mission.

Strengthen Retention Efforts

• Responses related to professional development, support systems, and commending practices help leaders understand what motivates faculty to stay—and what might drive them away.

Promote a Culture of Continuous Improvement

• Regularly using these assessments encourages an ongoing dialogue between leadership and faculty, fostering a culture of transparency, growth, and collaboration.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

• Instead of relying on anecdotal feedback, leaders can use survey data to make strategic changes, ensuring resources are allocated where they can make the greatest beneficial impact.

The Bottom Line: Faculty Flourishing Drives School Success

Healthy recruitment and retention practices are essential in creating a stable, motivated, and mission-aligned faculty body. These assessments provide a clear, actionable pathway for schools to refine their strategies, address weaknesses, and build a culture that robustly values and equips faculty.

The philosophy teacher rose, walked over behind the headmaster, put his hands on his shoulders, and prayed over him. He received the prayer and our subsequent words of love and commitment with dignity and gratitude, chuckling ruefully now through his tears. “My goodness,” I thought to myself, “I’d follow this man to the gates of hell.”   

What my beloved headmaster demonstrated in that moment, among other things, was vulnerability and trust. He entrusted his entire faculty with knowledge of his struggles, his fears, and his self-doubt. It wasn’t a pity party, nor an excuse, and in the end it didn’t take very long. But the impact of that moment has stuck with me to this day. Rather than diminishing our respect and confidence in him, precisely the opposite—and more than the opposite—happened. Not only did I come away with a deeper respect for this man and a stronger confidence in his heart, but I also became more invested in his success and our shared need to enroll more students.   

Patrick Lencioni has shown leaders the profound practicality of cultivating a habit of vulnerability on their respective teams. As he observes in The Advantage, “When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean those things, and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust.” He refers to this as “vulnerability-based trust” and it is the foundation for building a great team. Surface-level trust is straightforward: prove yourself to be dependable and others will trust you to get similar jobs done. Vulnerability-based trust is more paradoxical: Admit your weaknesses and mistakes, sacrifice your ego for the team, and your team will be more willing and more eager to tackle the terrifying unknown with you.   

The direct result of cultivating vulnerability-based trust on a team is that the team becomes healthier. Teammates admit their mistakes, ask for help, and acknowledge their weaknesses without fear of judgment. They stop playing politics. They say what needs to be said in the meeting, not in the parking lot. They argue passionately and productively for the best decision, not their own self-interest. They commit to team goals and decisions even when it is a sacrifice.  They feel greater ownership, become better collaborators, and willingly hold each other accountable. In this way, healthy teams are able to access the full potential of each member, make better decisions, and achieve far greater outcomes.     

No matter a school’s size, every leadership team will grapple with pressures that push them away from functioning cooperatively and productively. In large schools, the pressure for operational efficiency can push leadership team members into operational silos. Athletic directors or academic deans may become more concerned with their own fiefdoms than with the school’s needs, starting to protect their own interests instead of looking out for the good of the whole. In small schools, the pressure on administrators to wear many hats often leads to operational overlap and confusion. This lack of clarity is worsened by the fear of strife disrupting highly interconnected relationships. Imagine a head of school who attends the same church as her director of operations and is close friends with his wife, who is herself the school’s lead volunteer: it seems easier to quietly clean up his poor work than to address performance gaps directly. Easier, but more harmful in the long run. In this case, as in the case of the large school, trust is eroded, team health is sacrificed, operational effectiveness suffers, and the whole school is negatively impacted. 

The good news about vulnerability-based trust is that whatever your team’s starting point, it is possible to build authentic relationships and become a healthy team. The key is to realize that no amount of dependable performance earns this type of trust. Confidence and respect, both important, are earned this way, but they are not the trust we’re looking for. The vulnerable leader builds trust within his team by modeling vulnerability, entrusting himself, warts and all, to his team.  

If you want your teammates to trust each other, begin by entrusting yourself to them. Admit one of your shortcomings (hint: they already know what your shortcomings are, and they’re still with you). Admit your fault. Seek forgiveness. Ask for accountability moving forward. Commit to improving. Model the behavior you want to see in others. Are you worried that one team member would use that information against you? If so, what elephant in the room have you not addressed with them? Humility of this sort is not weakness when it is motivated by love for your team and your school. It’s strength—and the team members your school deserves will recognize it as such.

For the most recent episode, “Schools & the Wisdom of Patrick Lencioni,” Erik Twist and David Denton sat down with the Head of School at Xavier Charter Schools, Gary Moon, to discuss leadership team health and the Patrick Lencioni model. Below, you will find edited excerpts from the conversation: 

Erik Twist: I’ve been looking forward to this conversation in particular, because one thing that’s really exciting for us at Arcadia is that we’re seeing more schools come to know and utilize Patrick Lencioni’s models, his framework, his approaches. Personally, when I was at Great Hearts many years ago, being introduced to Lencioni’s work was absolutely transformative for us. It helped diagnose a lot of our internal conflicts and weak points, and it gave us a shared lexicon for identifying where we were breaking down. Improving our interpersonal relationships, and overall team health, began to actually lay the foundations upon which better operations could start to flourish. So I’m really excited to see more and more groups popping up that are taking the Lencioni framework and translating it into the K-12 market.  

Gary, I want to explore why the Lencioni framework was, or is, an important part of Xavier’s future, and what you learned as you went through the process of exploring Lencioni’s framework, his models, and the exercises that are just really crucial to teams having the types of conversations and gaining the clarity that they need. So, Gary, would you introduce Xavier and yourself and give us a little bit of the context under which you took up this team health work? 

Gary Moon: Well, my name is Gary Moon. I’m the head of schools at Xavier Charter School in Twin Falls, Idaho. We are the area’s only classical charter school and are in competition now for students where we haven’t been before. Xavier’s been around since 2007, and I’ve been the head of schools here for 13 years, so a significant amount of time. It’s my first experience in a charter school, and my first experience with a classical school as well. When I first came on, I was the only administrator. We now have a total of six individuals on the administration team, which is new. So, I think the reason that we became interested in doing something was because our administrative structure was evolving, and in all honesty, you know, I didn’t have time to think about that when I was the only administrator: it was a lot of putting out fires and surviving day to day.  

We started looking at the Lencioni model not this summer, but last summer (2023) and had our first interaction, our first training, with Arcadia. It’s been an extremely valuable investment for us. We’ve just finished our second round of training, in which there were a couple of new members of our admin team to bring onboard. And this second year it was a super easy sell, due to what we got out of it the first year, the progress that we saw, the steps we’ve been able to take, and how we’ve shared not just with our staff, but also with our board, why we think it’s valuable, and what they’ve seen over the last year as well. So that’s kind of where and how we got involved. The main reason is that we were changing. Our administrative structure was changing, and we didn’t want to be putting out fires and just surviving anymore. We wanted to be able to take some significant steps forward. 

Erik: Growth obviously puts new demands on the adults in any institution, but certainly and especially in a school. And we like to say at Arcadia that the culture of any school is always downstream of its adult culture, and the adult culture is always downstream of the leadership culture. And so if you don’t get that leadership culture right, in each of the ways that Lencioni addresses, that is going to trickle downstream into the overall culture of the school.  

So let’s go to the beginning: You worked with David in that first retreat with the team, and I want to hear from you both about what you focused on, where you started, and what were the headwinds. Gary, what transpired that got you to a place where, today you’d say “the team’s all in on it”?

Gary: I hadn’t received any leadership training, to be honest with you: very, very, very little. This was my first real exposure to the model and to Lencioni, but it was great. I felt confident going into that first training, because David and I probably had at least three Zoom meetings prior to lay out what it was going to look like. And those meetings made me nervous for sure about what we were going to do: it’s really work. I mean, you don’t go in and sit there and listen to somebody present to you for two days: that’s not what we did in either of the two retreats that we’ve had. It’s tough work, and it’s intense, and it’s honest, and for lack of a better word, it’s deep. You get to some pretty deep-rooted issues with individuals, and you get to know one another pretty well.  

We had set it up that, in that first retreat, I would be the one to be the most vulnerable and open and take criticism and be open to criticism. And because the team was pretty new, and I think we’re all pretty green, we didn’t go too deep into that for other members of the team. But this past summer, a few weeks ago, we did, and the admin team were super nervous about it, as David can probably tell you. But it was great. It went extremely well. And it has gotten us, even with a couple of additions to our admin team this year, off to a good start. We’ll have our own mini-retreat soon, picking up where we left off with David.  

Erik: David, I want to hear about that pre-work, why it exists, and what its goal is. When a team is new to the Lencioni model, a lot of groundwork has to happen. First, as Gary was saying, with the leader, but then also with the team. Can you map that out for us? I love what Gary said: you’re not bringing someone in to just talk at you, and you’re not doing stupid trust falls or other cheap sentimental crap that doesn’t stick at all. There’s substance, but how do you get there? What are you doing in that first retreat, and what is the goal, what should a team have at the end of that? 

David Denton: Let’s start with the end in mind, and then work backwards towards the pre–work. There are six critical questions that the team has to answer and those questions design clarity for the organization—really at every level, from the abstract down to the granular and particular. So starting with “Why do we exist?” and working all the way down to “Okay, who needs to do what tomorrow?” and all the things in between. But you tackle all six of those questions on the second day. That’s where you end. And the idea is not that you are just talking about those things, but you are working towards a tightly crafted answer to those things. So the goal is that you produce a playbook where you’ve condensed all those answers down to one page—really, you could fit them on a three–by–five index card that everybody can keep in their back pocket wherever they are on campus.  

But first, in order for the team to successfully go through and tackle and answer those questions, they reach the point as a team where they have the capacity to engage in that kind of conversation and disagreement with each other productively. And that’s really tough. That’s usually where things get toughest for a team. So the first day is all about what makes our team healthy. Patrick Lencioni writes about that in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I think of this book as asking what the five most difficult things are for human beings to do when they’re on a team. The thing that—if you made us do it—we would all want to run away and hide in fear, because it scares us. And the fundamental piece upon which everything else is built is trust. One way to talk about the retreats would be to say that it’s all geared towards advancing the team in their trust of each other. And Gary made it perfectly clear that the keyword is vulnerability–based trust, where you entrust yourself to your teammates, entrust them with knowledge of your weaknesses, your pain points, where you need help, and open yourself up to their feedback. That’s the thing that none of us wants to do. If you want to get your team to a place where they’re going to entrust themselves to each other, the leader has to model that and set that as the norm. Gary was a stallion at this. That’s what we were talking through in that pre-work. 

Erik: That’s so fascinating. I want to hear your reflections on why that’s such an important first step, especially through this lens of clarity. Because that’s what the exercise is attempting to bring out, right? It’s an exercise in clarity about things that exist. They’re there on every team. Everybody knows what people’s strengths and weaknesses are. Why is it better to shine a light on them in the leadership team, rather than just accept them, keep them under the rug, you know, not make a big deal about them? Somebody might say, “Well, like, everybody’s got weaknesses, guys, like, that’s just par for the course.” People might call it a little hokey: “We’re going to sit around in a circle and we’re going to call out people’s weaknesses? Why the hell are we doing that?” Walk me through that. 

Gary: Two days doesn’t seem long, but you accomplish so much there. I’m gonna bring in a couple of other things we did for the training, because it’s all tied together. We did a self assessment prior to the meeting on the first day of the retreat. Everybody fills that out, identifying where we see ourselves and each other in terms of trust and conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. So, we get a team score for that, and then we get individual scores that we can see. And then we also do a “Working Genius” profile, identifying our working geniuses and our working frustrations.  

And then we get to the exercise where we tell one another “this is what I need you to start doing, this is what I need you to stop doing, this is what I need you to keep doing.” And it is amazing how all of those things come together. Everything highlighted in the start, stop, keep doing, are so closely related to each of our Working Genius profiles, to the point that we’re laughing at it as we’re reading the descriptions of the profiles afterward. It’s a super trust-based exercise. You are vulnerable in ways you haven’t been with administrators and professionals at any other point in your career. And it gives an extremely deep understanding of where we lie in working together, and how we can best work together.  

Now when something is off with someone on my team, it helps me to understand where and how I can best approach them. We’re pretty diverse in our group, and I think we have people that are way better at some things, and like to do some things, way more than other people. We’re still feeling our way through that process, but we have a really good understanding of how to complete projects with our team in the most efficient way, and we’re getting better at it all the time.  

Erik: If we can’t be honest with one another, we can’t actually go build anything consequential. And you can’t be a great leader if you can’t stand in front of everybody and say, “Listen, I know I have weaknesses, and by modeling this exercise, I’m actually giving you permission to call it out.” You make it a culture where everybody has permission to put sunlight on these things because—and this is the thing we all wish that more school leaders took seriously—if the adults aren’t functioning, aren’t aligned, aren’t dealing with their stuff, aren’t consistently mending the cracks that are constantly forming in relationships, then those cracks start to get bigger and bigger until one day the dam breaks, and the people that are most hurt by that are the kids, right? That’s true in a home, and it’s true in a school. And so there’s a moral obligation, because we have kids in our midst, for the adults to be doing this type of vulnerable and strong work, because the consequences of not doing it are not just an unhealthy admin team at some business that makes widgets. Oh, you get a little less productive, right? No: There’s something deeper going on when you have children that you’re caring for. 

David: And you don’t—as a result of doing it—end up soft, and unable to make hard decisions. It’s not that you get soft and you’re now walking around with wounds just bleeding on everybody else. 

Erik: It’s the exact opposite, isn’t it? 

David: It is! Gary, how has that played out for you guys? 

Gary: Well, I can tell you. One of the greatest things that came out of that first retreat is we completely changed how we have our admin meetings. And one of the greatest things we got out of this was the daily five minute stand-up meeting right at the beginning of school. We’d never done that before, but it’s the best, and if I could tell any administrator to do one thing, do that with your admin team every single day.  

Our meetings are phenomenal now, because we can be honest with each other, and we can have serious hard discussions, disagree with each other, have conflict, and work our way through those things. And we don’t make every decision with all six of us agreeing 100% on the best move. But what we do come out of there with is: this is the decision we’ve made, we’ve all had an opportunity to make our points, and now we’re all going to support this decision because we decided it was what we were going to do. And if you look at our Working Genius profiles, we come at problems in a lot of different ways, and when everyone’s had an equal opportunity to participate in that discussion, it’s much easier for us to support whatever decision may be made. 

Watch the rest of the conversation here or hear the full episode wherever you get your favorite podcasts. 

Arcadia’s foundational frameworks service, rooted in Patrick Lencioni’s seminal models and fortified by our CAPA Pro certification, serves as your cornerstone for team health. Through the lens of these foundational frameworks, Arcadia guides your leadership team in harmonizing individual strengths and collective goals, fostering an institutional culture that doesn’t merely function, but flourishes. Contact us to learn more.

That had been back in 2019. Although a few significant world events delayed their plans, the board eventually chose to open the school in the fall of 2023. By the end of 2022, they had secured a charter, built strong community interest and a waitlist of students, and taken all the necessary steps to open the coming fall, but they had not yet hired a head of school. They had candidates with strong school leadership experience, but none with a strong grasp of the classical education at the heart of the board’s vision. Should they pick an acceptable headmaster and move forward, or hold out for a vision-aligned leader, delaying the school’s launch for a year? Delaying the launch would mean they had to let go of the hold on the property they had secured and risk losing the trust and commitment of families. Rather than devaluing their vision “playing it safe,” the board chose to prioritize vision. Despite considerable interest from families, donors, and community members, they decided not to commit to a facility or set a launch date without first securing the right head of school. This was an incredibly difficult decision, especially given the pressing needs of young children in the area who would remain without access to a low-cost classical education. 

In fact, they had to make this same decision again the following year when no leader emerged and were on the verge of having to relinquish their charter the year after that.  After multiple charter renewals, countless questions about the school’s opening, nearly two additional years, and a total of five years of effort, they finally found Jonathan Gray, an assistant headmaster from the Great Hearts charter network with strong leadership experience and deep knowledge of classical education. 

Many schools are born from the power of a noble vision: the flourishing of children. Considerable time, effort, care, and resources go into turning that vision into reality. There is often a belief that because the vision is so good, the school cannot fail. However, time and again, we see schools struggle during those crucial early years because boards compromise on the most critical decision: selecting the head of school. No decision is more important, and no individual will have a greater impact on the school’s ultimate success or failure than the head of school. 

There is more demand for excellent heads of school than there is supply, which is why having a clear and compelling vision is so essential. To build a great school requires perseverance and suffering. Cast a vision that is worth the wait, a vision so compelling that you would never dare to compromise. 

At Arcadia, we were fortunate to partner with Veritas Classical and find them that great next leader. The board’s relief was palpable when Jonathan Gray signed on: 

“Arcadia will forever hold a pivotal position in our school’s history book!! We are grateful for you and wholeheartedly believe that we wouldn’t have a headmaster without your help.  

“I can share that throughout my interactions with your company, I have felt that you took care of us from all angles, kept to your timelines and made them clear to us, and provided the kind of services and help that we didn’t even know we needed.  

“Pleased all around. Thank you and I hope this is not the conclusion of our time together.” 

A board’s most important decision is who will lead their school and fulfill their vision. Arcadia builds our entire search paradigm around this conviction.  

On the most recent episode, “The Benefit of Market Analysis for Small Schools,” Erik Twist and Ben Lindquist sit down with founder Ali Ghaffari and headmaster Patrick Sullivan of Divine Mercy Academy, a small Catholic school in Maryland, to discuss how market and competitive analysis aided their school’s business planning process. Below, you will find edited excerpts from the conversation:

Erik Twist: Because you’re running a school, there are curveballs every day and there is no algorithm. You never know what variables are going to be thrown at you. And yet here you are, stepping back to do this strategic planning, and you’re doing something that I think is actually kind of unique for a small school: creating a financial tool and conducting a market analysis. A lot of school leaders out there running smaller institutions would think, “Market analysis? That’s what the big guys are doing. We’re not a big for-profit company or a big school system. Why would we ever do a market analysis? Why should we care about that?” So why do you guys care about that? Is it that you’re trying to find a long-term facility, or are you thinking about five years out, ten years out, and the demographics of that, or a play on both? Help us understand why a small school would be as future-oriented and data-sensitive as you have been.

Ali Ghaffari: We are currently in “hyper-growth” mode. And in education, a good lesson always starts with the end in mind. Divine Mercy Academy starts with the end in mind: our end in mind is nothing short of sainthood. So, the hundred-year strategic plan is to get all these kids into heaven. Now, you might call that pie in the sky, right? And you might ask, “how do you package that? How do you make that into an elevator pitch?” We bring that back down to earth. So why is this small little startup doing a market analysis?

The reason for the market analysis is that we want to start with the end in mind. We want to clarify our objectives so that we can lay out the roadmap ahead. We have a lot of families who are joining; we have tutors who want to join; they all want to be part of this community. And there is a tendency to constantly be in reactive mode, as more people join. As more resumes and more applications come in, it’s very easy to sit back and constantly be in reactive mode. The temptation is to say, “Okay, let me just—I just gotta go to work every day and keep it going.” But the reality is that there’s a need to pump the brakes, to pull back the lens, to look at things from 10,000 feet and ask, “Okay, where? Where are we going? What’s the game plan here?” So that we don’t just rest on our laurels, saying “We’ve got all of these people here—so I guess that means we’re fine. Financially, academically, culturally, we’re fine.”

There needs to be an end in mind; we need to constantly have our eyes on the horizon asking what we want the school to grow into: “Where does Our Lord desire this school to go? And how can we take the energy and the dynamic culture and continue to drive that, towards that end?”

I think that in-house, we can pat ourselves on the back, and we can say, “Look what we’re doing! Look how great we are!” And in response to that, number one: it is in reality the Lord who is doing this work for us; we are humbled to just be working shoulder-to-shoulder in His vineyard. But second, we also need that 10,000-foot perspective to show us where we need to go, and that while it’s good now, there will come dry periods where things aren’t as as “hyper-growth” as they always were. And it’s important for us to keep our feet firmly planted, while at the same time looking ahead to the horizon and saying, “Hey, look this is where we want the school to go. We have our game plan. We know how we’re getting there. And some things are going great with that; some things are more challenging. We know our marching orders.”

Erik: I want to explore—because I think it’s an important thing for school leaders, especially within the Catholic, the classical, the Christian tradition—I really want to explore this balance that has to be struck between having a teleological vision and moving from that vision to execution.

So, to set that up, Ben, I have a question for you before we get into how Divine Mercy Academy is actually executing upon that 10,000 foot view. How have you worked with Divine Mercy to build that 10,000-foot view? Where are the things that were most important to adjudicate as you all worked together: what are the things that we need to have, and at what resolution, as we think about the overall strategic picture that Divine Mercy is going to execute against? What data were you working with Divine Mercy to grab?

Ben Lindquist: There are three things. And these three things are always core to a business planning process. First, we look at the market of families. We ask where Divine Mercy already enrolls families: where are they located? And where are there other eligible school-age families that would be likely to enroll, and who are likely to be attracted to the Divine Mercy vision and mission? So we actually pull census data. We look at census trends. We look at the changing dynamics in those trends. Right now Divine Mercy is actually situated in a very unique place, essentially on a peninsula where there isn’t much direct commuter access to the school. So, about half of the families in the school are commuting as much as 25 to 35, or even 40, minutes to get to school every day. So, we’re taking into account those geographic factors as well. Those are the contours of the family landscape.

The second factor is the competitive landscape. So: where are there other schools with a similar vision and mission that would be offering a similar orientation in their programs to Divine Mercy? And then also the broader public school landscape: the district in which Divine Mercy is situated, other surrounding districts, any other schools of choice that Divine Mercy is competing with. What we’re seeing today is a far more fluid and dynamic competitive landscape than we’ve ever seen in recent American history. And so, we take that into account and anticipate that, in order to carve out a path for Divine Mercy to have healthy growth. So that’s the competitive landscape.

And then the third and final factor is financing. Divine Mercy has been building an advancement team and function that has grown dramatically, and we want to see that continue to grow. It’s happening organically as Divine Mercy builds networks of donors and learns how to draw those networks in to support it philanthropically. But we want to ramp that up. And then we’re also looking at tuition and fees: the financial model we built allowed us to manipulate the tuition and fee pricing for Divine Mercy, and to see the impact of that on the cost structure for the school, especially teacher salaries and compensation. This financial picture is the third piece of the business planning.

Erik: That’s a lot of different data to look at. So, Ali, how are you now taking that information? Walk us through from an operator’s standpoint. How do you go from having this kind of overall cartography to making key tactical decisions? What will the next six to eighteen months look like for you based on the larger strategic work that you’ve engaged in?

Ali: The workup in the market analysis showed that our location is viable: our current location is a place where the population is growing, and it has a substantial Catholic population. And further, the flip side of the inconvenience of being on a peninsula is that there aren’t many competitors out here with us! We pretty much have an open ocean of space.

Erik: Were you skeptical of that prior to having that information?

Ali: Yes; it was a question mark that we couldn’t answer at that point in time. We had people saying, “There’s a future here” and others who said, “No, there’s no future here.” And we were at a standstill: is there or not? How do we prove that?

Erik: Exactly. Interesting.

Ali: Yeah, that was helpful. And so now we are actually in the middle of discussing a ten-year lease at our current location. So, this has very much helped us walk into that conversation with confidence, knowing that we have a good chance, if we keep doing things right, of continuing to flourish at our current location. So that’s been the first thing.

Second was how we position ourselves in the market for tuition and how we’re charging for our services. And the summation was, we are higher—but just a smidge higher—than all the other Catholic schools in the area, because we’re offering something different, something we believe is better. Although we’re not so high that we alienate our base, which is the large Catholic families who are all-in for the Catholic faith. And so whereas I had thought, just based on my own instinct, “Let’s undercut our competition by 15%, just to get people in the door. And then we’re going to come up, you know, $500 a year,” to have the experts come in and say, “Yeah, actually, you’re right on where you need to be” was a nice confirmation. I could sleep better at night, realizing that we hadn’t [undercut ourselves], we weren’t wildly off from what we needed to be doing.

But at the same time, they were able to give us some additional hints and say, “Hey, if you’re able to provide some more after-school activities, and more unique offerings, you might be able to provide a broader, more attractive offering.” And so, we had some work to do on that as well.

And then the financial calculator itself is helping us to discern this ten-year lease and the rent amount as we have people sending in other locations. I got one today: 13 acres, $2 million, and it’s right by my house, which [laughs] would be very convenient. But we can throw that into the calculator and say, hey, does this make sense for us or not? And so that’s helping us.

And then the role of funding is so important as well, since as we grow, having additional students brings a large growth in our budget every year, and we’re trying, as rapidly but as prudently as we can, to increase our teacher salaries. Right now, that’s far below what our Catholic competitors and public school competitors are offering: we want to increase that as quickly as we can. But with admissions, there are no guarantees; sometimes you get the kids coming in, sometimes you don’t. While we’ve been fairly steady, we don’t want to assume that we’ll have fifty new kids coming into the school every year. So, we have to be prudent about that.

And so that leaves other fundraising. Right now, student tuition is covering about 55% of our operating expenses, so we lean on fundraising for 45%. And the work that Arcadia did actually reveals a large weakness that we have, which is that we’ve leaned very heavily on just a few major donors. We haven’t really established a program that brings in steady midlevel and small donors to provide a nice, strong base in case one of those major donors ceases to give for whatever reason, to keep us from all of a sudden going into emergency, “the place is on fire,” mode! And so we’re now working on that, bringing in a board member with twelve years of expertise in fundraising at the Naval Academy. We’re hiring a director of advancement with fundraising experience at Hillsdale College. And we’re bringing in a CRM, so we’re going to start building this up and professionalizing: that’s our next six months. So, it’s exciting.

Hear the rest of the conversation, along with previous episodes of Schooling America, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Arcadia Education provides deep market, financial, and business analysis to help you make informed and confident strategic decisions. Contact us to learn more.