ATLIS teamed up with Ed Tech Recruiting to launch a new benchmark report focusing on what technology leaders earn in the way of salaries and benefits in their roles at independent schools. The in-depth analysis looks at compensation through a wide variety of lenses, giving tech leaders ample opportunity to have meaningful conversations around compensation. [10-minute read]

Christina Lewellen, Executive Director of ATLIS, shared insights from the Association's publication, The Role of Technology Leaders in Capital Improvement Projects in her recent article, "Saving Money on Your Next Capital Improvement Project: Evolving Tech Leaders Early Prevents Avoidable Mistakes," published in the July 2020 edition of the Education Marketing Association's publication, Essentials.

Access the entire issue from EdMarket here.

Over the past few months, a constant refrain of concerns about working in hybrid learning environments with younger students has emerged in our Virtual Town Halls and other conversations. The need for a specially focused Town Hall on Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Learners thus emerged. For this conversation, we focused on the faculty perspective, even as we recognized the need to wrestle with parent, student, and larger community concerns as well. -- SD [15-minute read]

Reposted from her LinkedIn post of 4 July 2020, Jennifer Carey's thought leadership assesses the value of "free" tools offered to technology leaders during the coronavirus pandemic. Carey, Director of Technology & Innovation at Temple Beth Am Day School in Miami, FL, and member of the ATLIS Board, provides guidance for a community that has been deluged with complications from the numerous offerings of online tools made to teachers and schools. [10-minute read] -- SD

Press Release

ATLIS Announces Incoming Directors

Foley, LaMonte, McFadden, join Board in July 2020

 The Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (ATLIS), the only professional association for independent school technology directors, announces the election of three highly qualified professionals to its board of directors: 

• James Foley, Assistant Head of School for Leadership & Innovation, St. Luke’s School, New Canaan, CT
• Hilary LaMonte, Senior Vice President, Data and Analysis for School Leadership (DASL), National Association of Independent Schools, Washington, DC
• Stacia McFadden, Director of Academic Technology, The Lovett School, Atlanta, GA

“We are engaged in an exciting period of growth for ATLIS, and we believe these talented individuals will bring a wealth of experience and perspective to our ranks,” said Jason Ramsden, ATLIS Chairman and Chief Information Officer, Ravenscroft School, Raleigh, N.C. “We’re engaged in a thoughtful process of evaluating our growing association’s strategic needs, and are confident Hilary, Stacia, and Jim will help us chart a successful course into the future.”

As schools look at the many factors they must consider before reopening their campuses in the fall, teacher preparedness has moved center stage. ATLIS Think Tank members Dr. Jill Brown of Albuquerque Academy, NM, and Natalia Walchli of Gulliver Schools, FL, have compiled a checklist of concerns schools may wish to address. This crowdsourced list, presented here as an infographic, as well as a more detailed checklist, received feedback from the ATLIS Think Tank as a whole, is meant to create a starting point for conversation and planning.  [10-minute read] -- SD

For this  ATLIS Summit, we crowdsourced ways to access and leverage data to address the many decisions that are confronting schools as they plan to continue to meet the needs of students in the months ahead. Access the archived video for the complete Summit that is outlined in brief in this post. -- SD

ATLIS Solidarity Statement 

Dear ATLIS Community,

Last week, across the nation and the globe, we witnessed communities coming together to

There is a lot of talk about what school is going to look like in September and a lot of questions that have come with it. Will we open online? What will our schedule look like? Will we have some kids or teachers in the building and some at home? Blended? Hybrid? Synchronous? Asynchronous? The questions go on and on…

One clear thing is that we will be using some form of technology to connect people that are in one place to those in another. With this, there are many hardware pieces to consider and how they will fit a school’s unique learning plan.

The May 20 ATLIS Virtual Town Hall focused on the ATLIS Technology Considerations for Campus Reopening, a list of questions and concerns that originated with the ATLIS Think Tank. Topics included online training and PD, assessment, and school culture. -- SD [15-minute read, 1-hour video]

In this post, we make the argument for building reflection into your end-of-year practices, especially after the major disruptions and changes we have encountered during COVID-19. Continued innovation and improvement needs this reinforcement to become sticky. Technology leaders can use the examples provided here for their own reflection to to guide the reflections at their schools. -- SD  [15-minute read]

As we wrap up the school year drive-by graduation ceremonies and teleconferenced  awards celebrations, we need to take a deep breath and make time to reflect on the rapid changes and developments that have occurred in the past few weeks as schools responded to the global pandemic of COVID-19. 

ATLIS continues to share a summary and video for its Virtual Town Halls. Our May 6 gathering focused on feedback and reflection for faculty, planning ahead, and summer plans. -- SD

[15 minute read; 1 hour video]

ATLIS reached out to the members of our Think Tank and others to learn what was on their minds as they look to the Fall. What do school leaders need to consider from a technology perspective as they consider options for reopening school. -- SD  [10-minute read]

Image Credit: Seanbrunett / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Numerous innovations have evolved out of necessity as independent schools responded to COVID-19. The harder question remains, How can we sustain those innovations into the future?  In this blog post, we recap the innovations and ideas for sustaining them that grew from our recent summit. - SD  [10-minute Read]

This archive continues to record and summarize the key ideas and questions shared by technology leaders in independent schools from around the world. On April 29, the group openly shared their contingency planning, questions on their minds for next year. They began to reflect on what they wished to hold onto for the future from their transitions during the coronavirus crisis, and they shared numerous ideas for reaching out to parents and maintaining school culture. -- SD [25 minute read; 1 hour video]

Quick Links

According to the ATLIS Vitals Check, 100% of our survey participants have completed the transition to online learning. ATLIS staff reflections about the development of the past few weeks identify three stages of the transition: "All Hands on Deck, followed by "OMG, It's Working... and now "Looking to the Future" as Technology leaders are beginning to reflect on the changes that changes to virtual school have wrought, particularly on their positions within the school. More immediate challenges discussed include end-of-year programs, to record or not to record 1:1 meetings, and vetting tools and resources discovered by faculty. This VTH archive also includes an update on the new resources to be found on the ATLIS Clearinghouse page. -- SD

[10-minute read; 1-hour video]

As we wrap up this extraordinary school year, technology leaders are being drafted to discuss end-of-year community rituals and how to address assessments in a virtual landscape. They also face planning for “after school” offerings, summer programs and projects and a very uncertain school year ahead. Participants also provided frank feedback on the ways vendors can best support technology leaders’ efforts to manage and deliver online the many components of their school communities. Finally, their thoughts turned to the leadership role they can play at their schools if they are included in the right conversations and if others understand better all that they do. -- SD

[15-minute read; 1-hour video]

As we move into the second stage of the remarkable transition of education to online spaces, new concerns are arising. Even as independent school technology leaders are assuming an even more critical role in their schools, they are wondering about what school will look like in the future and how this impacts their projects and plans for the coming year, as well as their budgets. Overall, we must question how the recent changes in the ways school is delivered has made a lasting impact on the independent school model. -- SD

[10-minute read]