When David Grant assesses diversification efforts at private schools nationally, he sees an industry that has done a decent job with student bodies, but not as well with the boards of trustees that govern those schools.
Of course, more than a few of those students undoubtedly aspire to careers on Wall Street ”“ and have ample direction from trustees on that front.
The boards of Fairfield County private schools are crammed with the county”™s power brokers, giving them ample access to people trained in strategic thinking, but not necessarily equipped to provide headmasters with a primer on educational policy.
GE Commercial Finance CEO Mark Begor is on the board at St. Luke”™s school in New Canaan. Hedge-fund entrepreneur Philip Duff is trustee chair at Greenwich Academy, alongside Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”™s Edith Cooper.
Along with Goldman Sachs, the rosters are replete with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and SAC Capital. What”™s more, the influence of local financiers extends well beyond the county”™s borders, with Goldman Sachs veteran Christopher Norton chairing the board of Loomis Chaffee in Windsor among several who serve as trustees for prestigious schools in Connecticut and Westchester County, N.Y.
The Connecticut Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) hosted a conference on the topic Sept. 20 in New Haven, with the keynote speaker David Grant having previously founded the Mountain School at Milton Academy in Vershire, Vt., a one-semester program allowing high-school juniors to work on a farm.
For the past decade, Grant has run the Morristown, N.J.-based Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, a $300 million trust originally created by the niece of John D. Rockefeller to fund whatever projects were deemed worthy by the board of trustees, including education.
The slate of speakers included Patrick Bassett, who heads the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), with which CAIS is affiliated. NAIS lists a dozen principles for board trustees, most of which address ways to keep the school on solid financial and legal footing. Simply put, in NAIS”™ eyes the board is not there to help teachers till the educational patch for some 24,000 students who attend CAIS member schools in Connecticut.
“Schools do a lot of things because they”™ve always been done that way; from an annual calendar designed to serve an agricultural society, to 37 or 42 minute classes piled one after another, to assessing student performance primarily through tests and papers where students work alone,” Grant said. “How do independent schools use their independence? They don”™t have to do anything just because it”™s always been done that way.”
Many trustees are accustomed to the way things are done in financial corridors ”“ fewer than a dozen trustees at six local private high schools held jobs with schools or organizations with experience working with kids, such as Greenwich Boys and Girls Club or Westport-based Save the Children, though several, like Begor, serve on the boards of similar organizations, in his case Greenwich-based Kids in Crisis.
Boards do, however, embrace variety: Norwalk musician and Media Music owner Jim Clark sits next to Begor on the St. Luke”™s board. Convent of the Sacred Heart trustee Joan Kirby represents the Temple of Understanding at the United Nations. Sara Judge McCalpin is president of the China Institute of America, which works to deepen relationships between the two countries. National security expert Lori Murray is a director at King Low Heywood Thomas in Stamford.
Clark, Kirby, McCalping and  Murray are, however, in the distinct minority. Of six private high schools in lower Fairfield County, 43 percent of trustees work in the financial sector, more than twice the number of the next largest bloc ”“ student mothers who are not currently in the work force, several of whom also are power brokers in their own right.
Trustees must be mindful of ensuring schools not only have the systems, people and alliances to fulfill their missions, Grant said, but also the storyline and symbols that convey what a school is all about and help make students feel they are in a special place.
“When heads of school are particularly strong in one or two of the frames, the board must be sure the others are not being neglected,” he said.
