OUR SERVICES

Classical Christian schools have a big problem: leadership benches are thin, and professional development programs are targeted to individuals, frequently just the top leaders. What if a school could equip whole teams at one time around that particular school’s unique mission and vision? 

Occasionally utilizing a two-person team with a combined 40+ years of experience in almost all facets of private and independent school leadership, Quiddity Consulting (QC) provides a complete perspective on school operations from startup to maturity. QC coaching equips a school’s leadership team from the board to the HOS to the executive team—and emergent leaders below them—and covers all aspects and functions of a school, including startup, strategic planning, governance, academics, and operations. 

Coaching is provided through both on-site training and remote instruction in order to offer ongoing support to school leadership teams, enabling them to grow from a lone ranger, siloed approach to a thriving, legacy-building institution full of collaborative leaders pursuing a unified vision.

Executive Coaching

The success of your school weighs heavily on the board’s one employee, the Head of School (HOS), and his/her relationship with key board members. Whether these individuals are new to their roles or seasoned veterans, one-on-one coaching will provide them with outside counsel, expertise in particular areas, and growing confidence. Typical coaching services include:

  • Monthly video calls tailored to your school’s needs

  • Insight and expertise from a 20+ year school leader (at the school head, HOS, and board levels)

  • Quick access to the consultant(s) throughout the month for quick questions and counsel

Startup & Project Consulting

While executive coaching is ongoing and individualized for the HOS and/or key board members, specific areas of project consulting include startup & strategic planning, capital sourcing, campus development, succession planning, board consulting, and many other areas of project support. Details of a few of these areas of consultation follow.

Board Consulting

The board’s primary responsibilities relate to vision and viability. To be effective, a board must have in place a mature governance structure, sound oversight and financial practices, and the ability to think strategically. With twenty or more years of experience, each, in board operations, our consultants are able to tailor consulting to meet your school’s particular needs. Consulting may take place online or in-person and may range from a one-time training session to ongoing training or consulting with board members.

  • 2-day onsite training with online follow-ups in 30 and 60 days

  • In-person, and/or online, consulting sessions as needed

Startup Consulting

A specialty area of Quiddity Consulting is assisting founders in launching new classical Christian schools, especially those employing a collaborative model (a.k.a., hybrid, university-model, blended, etc.). Training and guidance provided includes governance, finances, human resources, board and Head of School responsibilities, facilities, etc.

Services offered range from: 

  • 6-week training workshops featuring weekly sessions with founders from one or more start-up schools.

  • 2-day site visit with individualized consulting geared to a particular school.

  • Monthly 90-minute online coaching calls for up to 10 months throughout a school year, geared to an individual school.

Quiddity [ kwid-i-tee ]

noun, plural quid·di·ties.

  1. whatness; the quality that makes a thing what it is; the essence or inherent nature of a thing.

2. a distinction or eccentricity; an odd feature.

Interim Head of School

Experienced, capable leadership is critical to the success of every school, but is especially essential during times of transition and uncertainty. With decades of experience in the Head of School and Board roles, we are able to step in to provide stability by ensuring that the school remains mission-focused in pursuing its strategic goals while navigating—and persevering through—the day-to-day during difficult periods of change. Engagements are custom tailored to the needs and circumstances of each school.

Leadership Training

Is your Head of School supported by a unified “band of brothers” …or is it a cast of siloed supporters? Christian schools/ministries tend to be only as strong as their top leaders and vulnerable to the weakest moments of those individuals. For too many schools, the burden of leadership falls disproportionately—and sometimes all but exclusively—on the Head of School. That Lone Ranger model is a recipe for failure and a poor stewarding of future leaders. 

There is hope, however. Within the surging classical Christian education (CCE) movement, dedicated and passionate faculty and staff are emerging into notoriously narrow leadership ranks. What if CCE schools were able to harness the enthusiasm and promise of these rising leaders to create unified leadership teams galvanized around a shared vision and mission and enabled to bear increasing amounts of weight and responsibility for their school’s top leader in accomplishing the institution’s purpose?

Unlike most leadership training programs that focus exclusively on school Heads, the Emergent Leaders Initiative (ELI) is a biblically-based program for key and emerging administrators within a Christian school that encompasses instruction in leadership and school operations and employs a mentoring program to develop more confident, secure, and experienced leaders who are equipped to preserve and promote the specific mission of their school. Delivered collectively to the administrative team of a school (as selected by the Head of School), this program increases the exposure of rising leaders within the organization and builds a shared commitment to the mission, as well as trust and understanding among those responsible for fulfilling the mission.

  • Monthly 90-minute group training meetings, followed by monthly one-on-one mentoring meetings. (To minimize costs, most or all of the consultant’s participation will be online via Zoom or similar video conferencing platforms.)

Lab School Visits

Since its founding in 2004, Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas, has dedicated itself to serving as a resource to similar schools which would subsequently emerge throughout the country. This commitment became enshrined into the school’s bylaws as the 5th of its foundational pillars. Presently, Veritas’s 5th Pillar initiatives center around hosting visitors from other classical Christian collaborative schools on its 97-acre campus on the southwestern edge of Austin. 

Ideally, these visits are coordinated so that two or three schools arrive on campus at the same time in order to efficiently maximize the investment of the Veritas faculty and staff while simultaneously increasing the effectiveness for the guest groups in that they hear answers to questions that they may not have thought to ask and they expand their own professional networks by interacting not just with Veritas personnel, but also with their counterparts from the other visiting schools.

These onsite visits include conversations about any area of the school’s programs, operations, or governance in which the visiting schools are interested. In addition, Veritas frequently invites administrators from similar schools to attend its annual Paideia Conference in early August. This three-day conference is primarily for the Veritas parent community to become better equipped and inspired for the coming school year, with the first day dedicated to onboarding new families, faculty and staff, and the second and third days featuring a variety of workshop/breakout sessions and keynote addresses from speakers with national followings. Finally, the school also provides speakers/trainers to other schools (for which honorariums and travel expenses are requested to be paid directly to the employees).

Veritas’s 5th Pillar initiatives are directed by its Head of School, and historically these services have been provided to visiting schools at no cost. Likewise, as continuing board members of the school, the Fowlers also contribute freely their speaking time to all of these 5th Pillar initiatives delivered on campus. Quiddity Consulting will help facilitate visits to Veritas Academy should clients desire that connection.