A key component to overall enrollment growth is retention.  The more students that you are able to retain year after year, the greater your potential to continue growing as opposed to staying even or declining. Someone once said, “It is easier to keep a seat that fill a seat!”  We couldn’t agree more. How do your parents’ feel about your school?

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Our final hack, involves retaining families by establishing a feedback loop.  Such an effort allows leaders to gain insights into individual family concerns and how your school can address those concerns prior to families exploring alternative options.

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Many neglect this critical area as in many cases, retention sometimes can feel that it requires little attention beyond sending a notice to families on key deadlines and basic expectations.  Early knowledge of families’ satisfaction and intentions can greatly enhance the ability of school leaders to quickly address concerns and continue providing a top quality education and environment.

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Are there processes in place for your parents to provide constructive criticism without experiencing a backlash? Do your parents feel that their opinions matter?  Besides an anonymous suggestion box for ideas, a great way to understand the ongoing needs of your families is to develop and implement a survey program. Perhaps a survey that is linked with their annual enrollment and registration will provide feedback from parents as to what they feel very strongly about.  Although the anonymous suggestion box is good for those parents who may feel threatened and singled out by their comments, a survey associated with a student is more meaningful; because if there is a legitimate concern, leadership should be involved and the issue remedied directly with the parent in a timely manner.  When a parent knows that the school took the time to resolve their issue, they become advocates and cheerleaders for the school.

There are many different ways to design and execute a retention program.  A streamlined way would be to incorporate a survey into your re-enrollment process. The video below demonstrates a great retention program framework.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJf5WIvDbYQ