Michael Soulé

Phases of School Development

/in , /by

Ch. 2 from Partnerships of Hope, Building Waldorf School Communities by Christopher Schaefer

Underlying this description of the life cycle of Waldorf schools are a number of principles.  The first is that all institutions are human creations; they are created by people with an idea in response to a perceived need.  In the case of Waldorf schools, this need is a sense that the children in a given community or region want Waldorf education. The second principle is that schools, and indeed all organizations, are living entities, with phases of adaptation, growth, crisis and development .  This means that organic metaphors such as seed, stalk, bud and flower; or birth childhood, adulthood and old age are more relevant to the biography of schools than mechanical images such as that of an input-output system, a clockwork mechanism or a well- running engine. (View as PDF...)

Michael Soulé

Seven Keys to Sustainability, full version

/2 Comments/in /by

In order for an independent non-profit educational organization to become financially sustainable in a culture and environment that is highly consumer driven, leaders in schools will need to become increasingly creative in how they view and work with finances and the resource landscape (economic) in which they are embedded. Here are seven keys that every leader could consciously consider for their schools as they chart their financial future.

1. Associative Economics

 The idea behind associative economics arose from the work and insights of Rudolf Steiner in 1922 through his work with the first Waldorf School, and in a series of lectures on economics. Steiner’s visionary capacity brought to light a new imagination about economic life and money; that consciousness applied to the nature of transactions in the conduct of financial life would allow us to transform our relationships with each other and with money and provide a new basis for transforming the entire economic system. Understanding this is essential in the development of a school. In the attached articles by Warren Ashe, Siegfried Finser and Werner Glas, authors share important insights on the effect on school finances of seeing tuition in a new light.  Going further, John Bloom in an interview segment from the film The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner, and in his book The Genius of Money, offers insights into the realm of social finance and Steiner’s ideas. Christopher Houghton Budd has numerous publications and research on Associative Economics on his website that goes even deeper into the realm of Associative Economics. And lastly, Gary Lamb offers in his book on Associative Economics, an excellent treatment of the background, history, details and practical applications of Associative Economic thinking for schools. To be familiar with this book and these ideas will help every school leader work with financial matters in a new way.

2. The Intersection of School Finances and School Choice

 Initiatives in the US around School Choice offer a wealth of insights into ways we can support the transformation of educational funding. The School Choice movement imagines a possible future where the social impulse of Waldorf education and its accessibility to more families of all economic levels might be realized. In many countries, independent schools suffer from the fact that the funding for education managed by the government for the public good is often only available for government-run schools. This, of course, is not healthy for the public good or necessary.  It does not support diversity or excellence in education approaches.  What’s more, it leaves those families who would otherwise not choose a government-designed and regulated schooling experience for their children to pay for alternatives on their own. This effectively takes choice away from parents, especially parents who are economically poor.

There are numerous organizations within the US with initiatives to change this by transforming the way government funding supports parental choice through vouchers and tax credits. (In other countries it is different). Every independent school should be aware of these efforts and actively support this movement toward greater choice and a more widely accepted distribution of educational funding to all schools.

AWSNA supported the development of two reports on the realities of school choice, researched and written by Gary Lamb (read). The most recent one is available in our resource collection and is a valuable read for anyone who is considering the long-term financial future of a school. In addition to these good reports, there are a number of groups with valuable information about how to stay informed and involved in these movements. One good resource is the annual report of the Federation for School Choice. (read)

3. Rethinking Tuition

 How we think about tuition, whether it is viewed as a payment, a mandatory contribution or a gift, has a significant effect on the financial relationships in the school and especially on development work and fundraising. The whole avenue of concerted, intentional, and value-driven development work is longing for further evolution. In many schools currently using a tuition-based model for financing their operation, we can find creative ways to think about and manage tuition. The article on Siegfried Finser's talk about tuition as gift money is a good start.  Other excellent work on how to transform the tuition process has come out of the work of Bob Munson and Gary Lamb under the name ATA: Accessible Tuition for All.

While not everyone will be able to implement this process model, understanding the ideas behind it is important for everyone. Bob Munson and Mary Roscoe offer a clear and compelling background about ATA in their Primer. There are a few others experiments with creative tuition models including a three-tier tuition level model in use at the Brooklyn Waldorf School and a shared tuition experiment in UK, shared by Chris Schaefer. All of these are creative attempts to bring social ideals to tuition.

Lastly, if there is a natural antipathy to money and wealth in the school culture, overcoming or transforming that antipathy will be a major step toward sustainability. While this raises all sorts of issues it is the choice that independence brings.

4.  Government Support and Charter Schools’ Work to Reach a Wider Population.

In some countries, the separation between public funding and independent schools is less of an issue that in the US. In Australia and Canada, for instance,  independent schools operate with significant support from the government. The newsletter article by Tracey Puckeridge explores the dynamics of government funding in Australia. One response to the limitations of tuition based funding and being able to reach a more diverse range of socio-economic levels in the US has grown from the movement for public charter schools based on Waldorf education. This movement was founded with a social gesture to overcome financial hurdles for parents. There are now 38 charter schools inspired by Waldorf in 12 states. Their experience in trying to operate a Waldorf inspired school in the government bureaucratic and regulatory environment and lessons they have learned are important.

5. Waldorf Movement Successes to Strengthen Enrollment and Fundraising

 It is generally true that schools with more students have a stronger financial picture and that schools that are more effective at development work and fundraising also feel a reduction in the pressure that high tuitions place on parents. While these two areas, enrollment and fundraising, are important, they alone will not solve the primary financial challenges of schools. Nonetheless, we must do all that we can to increase our success in both areas. There are numerous resources available to help schools strengthen their approaches to fundraising and enrollment. One handbook created by AWSNA is a good starting place on Fundraising. (read) A recently published book on achieving full enrollment by Siegfried Finseris also helpful. Both these topics will be covered more in depth in future newsletters.

6.  The history and challenges of school financing in the Waldorf Movement

It is essential to have an understanding of the history and context for the challenges of funding for Waldorf Education since the beginning. Gary Lamb has collected, in the early chapters of his book, The Social Mission of Waldorf Education, a clear and concise history of the first Waldorf School and its financial life. Werner Glas outlines some of the unique challenges for Waldorf schools in his article from Administrative Explorations, sharing some insights about Steiner’s insights about the Economic life and its relationship to schools.

Social Mission- Ch 2 Founding of first Waldorf School

Social Mission- CH 3 Finances in Early Years

Social MIssion- CH 4 World School Assn

Social Mission- Ch 16 Broad Based Funding for WS

Underlying Themes in the Economics of Waldorf Schools by Werner Glas

7. The Reality of Interdependence

All the resources you need for your school to thrive are already present in your community. The work is to recognize and support the needed capacities, not just in the classroom and across the faculty, but also in the parent body and in others in the local/regional economic community. The economic life, as re-imagined through Steiner’s and other’s insights, can help us to appreciate more and more the value of our relationships and interdependence with each other. Gradually, successful schools are finding new ways to create and nurture partnerships within the school and in the greater community that are based on a commitment to a healthy community and are mutually beneficial.

Seven Keys to Sustainability –Michael Soule, comments and input by John Bloom

 

Michael Soulé

Intimations of a New Economic Story, John Bloom

/in /by

 

John Bloom
Given the very real tragedy of our current economy, we need a new economic story that dispels faulty assumptions about growth, the environment and our natural resources, and transforms the anti-social power of self-interested behavior along with the extractive practice of over-accumulation.

The new economic story is rooted in the incontrovertible reality of interdependence—social, ecological, and spiritual. At the same time, the new story honors cultural freedom and equality in matters political. The story embraces the value of dynamic tensions inherent in this construction. The new economic story restores to money its original purpose, to be put at the service of people who can use it to serve others, and eliminates the use of money solely to make more money. An essential part of the story is money as differentiated transactional functions—purchase, loan, and gift. Each of these functions has its own qualities that support not only the continual circulation of money, but also its renewal. The story assumes that economic activity will generate surplus capital, some appropriate portion of which will be reinvested in entrepreneurial innovation and some significant portion will be returned as gift to regenerate culture.

The story is based upon an understanding that all economic activity is actually initiated by gift, just as each of our breathing lives is supported at the outset by the gift of nourishment. That fluid gift is transformed through human development into capacities for new ideas and recognition of the needs of others. This is a snapshot of how a healthy culture contributes to economic renewal. Lending helps implement those economic ideas and the money is quickened by the use of loan (or gift) proceeds for purchase.

So the story portrays economic self-renewal through the continual flow and transformation of money through transactions. Economic life is actually managed collaboratively or associatively by representatives of all the parties affected by it. Thus, in the new story everyone’s basic needs are present, and through the circulation of money our interdependence becomes transparent and life-affirming. It is fully integrated. It is not only possible but also necessary for our survival. This is the new economic story characterized—nothing more than an intimation. It will take tremendous will, steadfastness of purpose, and an endless supply of social tact and grace to bring about this transformation. But first it is important to understand the intentions of the story itself, so it can support coherent action and be told compellingly to others.

Digging deeper into the current economic story surfaces lots of apparently disconnected pieces. The story is laden with an abundance of impenetrable shadow elements and sorely lacking in the brilliant light of the possible. The story the media tells includes, but is not limited to: free markets as the primary approach to the world’s problems; the benefit of competition regardless of its consequences; and, the inevitability of inequity and the value of accumulated wealth. The more I hear the story the more fictional, even cynical, it appears as the evidence of its rampant and unethical self-interest accumulates. I also suspect I am not alone in suffering dissonance as I live within a storied system that appears to be crumbling, while working to support the emergence of a new one, or, at least, one that operates on a drastically revised set of principles.

To see this emergence as a transformation rather than replacement of the old presents a problem. Transformation assumes an interconnected inter-influential world in which the potential new forms must lie somewhere within the existing one. To see this potential requires acceptance of it all, even the shadows. However, the economic story I tell myself is neither one of good versus bad, nor of suspended judgment. It is instead one that transforms: assumptions about to direct experience of; power over to responsibility with; and, self-interest into service to.

Most of the stories I am told about economics are based upon the dynamic of polarities, the haves and have-nots, management and labor, supply and demand, red and blue. This model of dualistic thinking has a long history in Western culture, but it no longer serves if the non-material world of thoughts, feelings, and intentions is to be taken seriously. To this day we are still teaching that our world is constructed around managing polarities. Faucets run hot and cold, batteries have positive and negative poles, gender is defined as male or female—a small sample. At a material level these dualities serve as nothing more than identifiers or locators. They really have very little to do with how we make meaning out of experience; instead, meaning emerges through the interaction of multiple polarities. When we sense temperature, or electric current, or the human psyche, we are looking at indicator-concepts that acknowledge a field created through the co-presence and movement of polarities. For example, though I am male, I am aware of both masculine and feminine qualities that operate within my character and inform my interactions with the world.

If we are to have a new economic story, it will require a shift in thinking that sees money in the same light—as an indicator-concept, an energetic field, which is not a thing or commodity but rather a circulating measure and store of value which itself arises from the relationship between unused resources and unmet needs in economic life. The essential point is: If we are to transform the current economic story to a new one, whether you agree with my telling of it or not, we are going to have to change our thinking to include the notion that every material matter has a non-material counterpart; and, further, that each of us stands as measure of the dynamic energy field that arises from their constant interactions. How we choose to act as economic beings, individually or collaboratively, can transform the economic story, and at the same time, bring positive change to culture and the processes of governance as a by-product. Such is the power of story.

John Bloom
© 2010

 

Michael Soulé

Creative Approaches to Tuition: The Free Education Group at Michael Hall in England, 1977-80

/in /by

   The Free Education Group at Michael Hall School in England: 1977-80

By Christopher Schaefer

It was the late 1970’s and a number of us with children at Michael Hall, a well-established Waldorf school in Forest Row, Sussex, had an intense interest in Steiner’s social and economic ideas. We wanted to get away from the fee for service model of set tuitions and began talking to the faculty and council of the school about alternatives, tuition as a percentage of income or different levels of tuition. However, the Bursar, the English equivalent of the Business Manager, was set against any form of financial experimentation. He was even opposed to sending one tuition bill to the seven families who were interested in alternatives. So we began meeting once a month and decided to simply total up our tuition amounts and then to see what each of us could pay. This led us to talk, and to share our financial and life circumstances. One summer the farmer’s wheat crop failed due to hail, another spring a new roof was needed by another family, and a third needed to help an ailing parent. And yet for the first three terms we managed to have a surplus. This happened because when you listened to others you looked at your own priorities and expenditures with new eyes and decided to give more. Was the second car really needed or could we share with another family, what else could we cut or how could we increase income? As each family went through such questions we contributed more than enough money, indeed our surpluses funded a teacher vacation fund for the faculty for two years running.

As we learned to pool our resources we also began a simple import business and began exploring other income creating ventures. Eventually we built the group to 30 families, in part through the school sending us their scholarship families. While we attempted to make sure the families were motivated by the same ideals in this we were often not successful and the group eventually stopped its work when we accepted too many families who both needed financial support and did not share our underlying values. Some of lessons learned :

1)     Every way of working with tuitions in unconventional ways takes more time and a deeper connection between people.

2)     Success is dependent on members of a group sharing the same motives and values and not working primarily out of self- interest.

3)     A deeper connection between people, sharing biographies and life circumstances, including finances, enhances generosity and initiative.

4)     Generosity can be contagious. Four faculty members in the school who shared our interests started a shared income community, using one checking account and pooling their resources.

5)     Tuition support groups of the type described can be worked with within a school having a traditional tuition model as long as the school can count on a set amount of income per child. Indeed there is no reason a school cannot work with a variety of tuition approaches at the same time.

6)     Involve the parents in the issue of how to develop alternatives to a set tuition model; indeed it is their task to assure the financial sustainability of the school.

 

Michael Soulé

Sustainability: History of Funding for Waldorf Schools

/in /by

6.  The history and challenges of school financing in the Waldorf Movement

It is essential to have an understanding of the history and context for the challenges of funding for Waldorf Education since the beginning. Gary Lamb has collected, in the early chapters of his book, The Social Mission of Waldorf Education, a clear and concise history of the first Waldorf School and its financial life. Werner Glas outlines some of the unique challenges for Waldorf schools in his article from Administrative Explorations, sharing some insights about Steiner’s insights about the Economic life and its relationship to schools.

Social Mission- Ch 2 Founding of first Waldorf School

Social Mission- CH 3 Finances in Early Years

Social MIssion- CH 4 World School Assn

Social Mission- Ch 16 Broad Based Funding for WS

Underlying Themes in the Economics of Waldorf Schools by Werner Glas

 

This is a continuation from the article Seven Keys to Sustainability in the April 2014 LeadTogether Newsletter.

Michael Soulé

Centre for Associative Economics, UK

/in /by
Associative Economics
The Centre for Associative Economics in the UK offers a website, publications, a monthly newsletter, seminars and access to research on Associative Economic s based on the insights of Rudolf Steiner and many others. These resources provide a wealth of insights into new economic thinking. Founder Christopher Houghton Budd focusses his work also on the funding of Education and the teaching of economics in High Schools. His book, Freeing the Circling Stars, outlines refreshing thinking about the nature and future of funding for education and Waldorf schools. (see review on this site)
The excerpt below is from the website. Click here to visit the site: http://www.associative-economics.com/

With its many and wide-ranging implications for modern economic life, associative economics places human beings at the centre of all economic processes. Our capacity to be both free and responsible means we can make conscious what is otherwise left to the unseen working of market forces. Likewise, we can regulate our own behaviour without recourse to the state.

 Associative economics takes full account of wide-ranging views fromAristotle to Adam Smith, Karl Marx to Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, as well as the 'sustainability critique' and the sophistications of modern finance. It also owes much to the observations of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian 'renaissance man' whose seminal work was concerned with the advent of global economics.
 Associative economics is about the shift from competitive, national economies to the inherent dynamics of a single global economy – a change that needs to be made today if the underlying causes of the world's growing inequities are to be addressed.
 Development of the associative economic approach entails continuous dialogue and discussion, for which a general forum is provided at the AE Exchange. Insofar as associative economics derives from the work of Rudolf Steiner, key texts by him and their subsequent elaboration can be found on the website of the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum, part of the Social Sciences Section of the School of Spiritual Science, which has its world centre in Switzerland.
Michael Soulé

Sustainability: Enrollment and Fundraising

/in /by

5. Waldorf Movement Successes to Strengthen Enrollment and Fundraising

 It is generally true that schools with more students have a stronger financial picture and that schools that are more effective at development work and fundraising also feel a reduction in the pressure that high tuitions place on parents. While these two areas, enrollment and fundraising, are important, they alone will not solve the primary financial challenges of schools. Nonetheless, we must do all that we can to increase our success in both areas. There are numerous resources available to help schools strengthen their approaches to fundraising and enrollment. One handbook created by AWSNA is a good starting place on Fundraising. (read) A recently published book on achieving full enrollment by Siegfried Finseris also helpful. Both these topics will be covered more in depth in future newsletters.

This is a continuation from the article Seven Keys to Sustainability in the April 2014 LeadTogether Newsletter.

Michael Soulé

Sustainability: School Finances and School Choice

/in /by

2. The Intersection of School Finances and School Choice

 Initiatives in the US around School Choice offer a wealth of insights into ways we can support the transformation of educational funding. The School Choice movement imagines a possible future where the social impulse of Waldorf education and its accessibility to more families of all economic levels might be realized. In many countries, independent schools suffer from the fact that the funding for education managed by the government for the public good is often only available for government-run schools. This, of course, is not healthy for the public good or necessary.  It does not support diversity or excellence in education approaches.  What’s more, it leaves those families who would otherwise not choose a government-designed and regulated schooling experience for their children to pay for alternatives on their own. This effectively takes choice away from parents, especially parents who are economically poor.

There are numerous organizations within the US with initiatives to change this by transforming the way government funding supports parental choice through vouchers and tax credits. (In other countries it is different). Every independent school should be aware of these efforts and actively support this movement toward greater choice and a more widely accepted distribution of educational funding to all schools.

AWSNA supported the development of two reports on the realities of school choice, researched and written by Gary Lamb (read). The most recent one is available in our resource collection and is a valuable read for anyone who is considering the long-term financial future of a school. In addition to these good reports, there are a number of groups with valuable information about how to stay informed and involved in these movements. One good resource is the annual report of the Federation for School Choice. (read)

This is a continuation from the article Seven Keys to Sustainability in the April 2014 LeadTogether Newsletter.