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Hello there, SAIS community!
As I wrap up my first year as president of SAIS, I’m filled with deep gratitude for the opportunity to serve and learn alongside such an inspiring network of school leaders.
A personal highlight was completing a 19-city tour across our region, where I met with heads of school throughout our association and listened closely to the hopes, challenges, and bold visions shaping each campus. While common themes emerged, what stood out most was the importance of one’s local context and how each school uniquely reflects the community it serves. I look forward to continuing these meaningful conversations and visiting a new set of schools in the year ahead.
Collaborating with leaders who are willing to ask bold questions, navigate uncertainty, and design the next chapter for their communities has been invigorating and motivating for the SAIS staff this year. In that spirit, I want to take the moment to spotlight the projects underway at SAIS.
Newsletters & Research
Our revised newsletters—Signals, R&R, and Board Bulletin—have been an intentional work in progress, designed to equip and empower you with timely research and resources to spark new ideas, drive strategy, and advance purpose-driven plans. Thank you for the thoughtful and constructive feedback you’ve shared throughout the year. It’s helped us sharpen our focus and increase value.
Data & Dashboards
A clear and consistent request from our member schools has been the need for more relevant, actionable data. In response, SAIS has expanded and refined our data collection strategy—committing both short- and long-term efforts across multiple pathways to deliver insights that matter.
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Pulse Surveys: Each month, SAIS publishes Pulse Perspectives, real-time snapshots of member voices on emerging issues and challenges. If you’ve missed previous editions, we’ve created a dedicated hub to access all past reports.
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Survey Products: We’ve redesigned our survey instruments to better align with member priorities. Most notably, the School Community Feedback Survey has been updated to include a set of benchmarkable core questions alongside optional items tailored to each school’s mission. The revised version will launch in early fall.
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Annual Benchmarking Survey: Beginning this June, all member schools will participate in a benchmarking survey as part of the annual membership renewal process. The first phase will focus on compensation, with future iterations expanding to additional high-interest areas. At this year’s Annual Conference, we’ll introduce Meridian, SAIS’s new data benchmarking platform, designed to provide school leaders with clear, comparative insights across essential operational domains.
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Research-Based Surveys: SAIS will continue conducting focused research projects to support schools in navigating timely challenges. These include the Motivation & Engagement Survey and School Safety & Security Survey, among others. At our upcoming Annual Conference pre-conference workshop, we will also release The First Years Matter: Research Insights on Early Career Educators—a year-long study capturing the experiences and needs of early career educators within our member schools.
Through these efforts, SAIS is building a stronger data ecosystem—designed to inform decisions, highlight trends, and support continuous improvement across our association.
Governance & Organizational Health
With governance issues on the rise, I have been partnering with a representative sample of heads across our association, board chairs, and the SAIS board to address a timely challenge: How might we design a governance framework that strengthens organizational health in a changing educational landscape? After many iterations, we have created an SAIS framework, Governance Health Index. Grounded in six key competencies—Collaborative Leadership, Community Engagement, Strategic Direction, Talent Cultivation, Shared Accountability, and Adaptive Innovation—the index provides a shared language and reflection tool to help schools assess, align, and grow their governance practices in service of long-term mission success. During the upcoming year, we will be designing three evaluation instruments to support the process: board self-evaluation, executive committee evaluation, and head evaluation. Stay tuned for the full report and ways for your trustees to learn more.
Accreditation & Process
SAIS has revised its Accreditation Guidebook and portal to provide clearer terminology, streamlined requirements, and an improved timeline. Enhancing both the accessibility and visual appeal of our primary resources, these updates reinforce the relevance of accreditation and the distinctive strengths of the SAIS process, while modeling the continuous improvement mindset we expect of our member schools. Through broad engagement with heads of school, accreditation chairs, coordinators, and committee members, we’ve fostered a more consistent, supportive, and efficient experience—one that builds confidence, sets clearer expectations, and encourages schools to approach the process authentically and mission-specifically.
Events & Experiences
SAIS is introducing several new events and experiences to support the evolving priorities of our member schools. The Timely Challenge Conference will focus on one of the most pressing issues facing schools today—the recruitment and retention of faculty and staff—offering research, strategies, and peer exchange to address this critical challenge. The Blueprint Sprint provides leadership teams with a focused environment to turn strategic plans into measurable action. The Independent School Brand Summit convenes professionals in marketing, enrollment, advancement, and communications to examine how brand shapes sustainability and impact. Finally, the Small Schools Summit offers a dedicated space for leaders of smaller schools to explore tailored strategies and solutions. Each of these experiences reflects our ongoing commitment to relevance, innovation, and member value.
As we look back on this year of listening, learning, and building with you, it’s clear that the strength of our association lies in the collective wisdom, creativity, and courage of its leaders. The projects outlined above reflect not just the work of SAIS, but the voices and vision of our member schools—pointing us toward a future where strategy is actionable, governance is reflective, data is meaningful, and professional learning is dynamic and responsive. As we look ahead, we remain committed to walking alongside you to ask bold questions, address complex challenges, and co-design what’s next for our schools and our students. Thank you for your partnership, your leadership, and your belief in the power of this community.
Hope your summer is restful and restorative,
Dr. Brett Jacobsen
SAIS President
brett@sais.org
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