Emerging Issues Committee

As Vice President of the the Board of the Association of Independent Maryland Schools (AIMS), I have the pleasure of serving as Chair of the newly-formed Emerging Issues Committee, or EIC. The purpose of the EIC is to advise the Executive Director (Ron Goldblatt) and the Board on a broad range of emerging issues that are affecting or could affect member schools, including educational trends, finance, and demographics. The nine-member EIC seeks to identify, analyze, and “sort” emerging issues. This past Monday, we held our first meeting of the school year on the beautiful campus of The Key School in Annapolis. We were quite fortunate to have an outstanding guest presenter, Donna Orem, the Chief Operating Officer of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Ms. Orem led a lively, interactive dialogue on trends that NAIS is following at a national level, including demographics and the economy, "disruptive innovations" such as distance education, a changing consumer base, and the new workforce. We met for two hours, and, quite frankly, could have used two more, as the discussion was so pertinent for all the school leaders at the table as well as for AIMS as a whole! Our next meeting will be held at Calvert in January. While the exact topic is TBA, I believe we will focus on one of the aspects of Ms. Orem's presentation and examine it in more detail. I will report back with a synopsis of future meetings.