Right now, in a conference room on a campus near you, an independent school leadership team is sitting down to plan the 2026-27 school year.

Maybe it’s even YOUR leadership team.

You have a blank grid in front of you. You have a chance to start fresh. You have the opportunity to design a year that prioritizes the health and sanity of your community.

And then, someone hits the “Copy/Paste” button.

We take this year’s schedule, shift the dates by one day, and call it a draft. Then, we start adding the new ideas: the new musical showcase night, the extra parent education session, the revised homecoming schedule.

We rarely ask what we are “sunsetting.” Instead, we only ask where we can squeeze in one more thing.

The Trap (And My Confession)

I know how easy it is to fall into this trap because I did it myself for years.

When I was working inside schools, I was a chronic “Copy/Paster.” It felt efficient. It felt safe. Deleting a legacy event meant risking an angry email from a parent or a difficult conversation with a colleague who “loved that tradition.”

Keeping the event on the calendar felt like the path of least resistance. So, I rolled it over, year after year.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I wasn’t being efficient. I was just avoiding the hard decisions. And now that I am on the outside looking in, I see clearly what I missed back then.

The View from the Outside

In my consulting work, I conduct community engagement and volunteer program audits for schools. As part of that process, I ask leadership to send me their full list of yearly events.

I have received spreadsheets with hundreds of rows. Yes, hundreds.

I remember looking at one of these lists recently and having flashbacks to my school administrator days … feeling physically and mentally overwhelmed just reading it.

If looking at the list is exhausting for me, imagine what it feels like to be the parent trying to navigate it, or the staff member trying to execute it.

You may be feeling that same exhaustion right now because you are living it.

When Family “Engagement” Becomes Family Exhaustion

We often tell ourselves that adding more events increases “engagement.” We assume that if we offer more touch points, families will feel more connected.

But for most of our private and independent school families, our event calendars are not a menu of opportunities—they are a list of obligations.

When we pile on the events—the cocktail hours, the galas, the showcases, the mandatory meetings—we aren’t just asking for their time. We are asking for their mental load too. We are asking them to arrange childcare, leave work early, fight traffic, and manage the logistics of yet another commitment.

I have interviewed countless parents who love their schools but dread the notifications of one more thing they’re expected to participate in. They are drowning in “opportunities.” Sometimes, the best way we can support our families is to give them their Tuesday night back.

The Toll on Faculty & Staff

On the internal side, the cost can be even higher.

Every event on the calendar requires operational capacity. It requires planning, setup, breakdown, communication, staffing, and emotional energy. When we refuse to subtract, we treat our faculty and staff’s energy as an infinite resource. It isn’t.

When we add a new initiative without sunsetting an old one, we aren’t “innovating.” We’re diluting. We’re spreading our teams so thin that we can’t execute anything at an A+ level because we are too busy trying to survive the sheer volume of C+ obligations.

Moving Toward Strategic Subtraction

As you look at next year’s calendar, I challenge you to resist the urge to Copy/Paste. Instead, try a “Zero-Based” approach.

Assume nothing rolls over automatically. Every event must fight for its spot on the school calendar.

Then, ask these three questions for every single event:

1. Does this event actually advance our mission today, or is it just a habit we inherited from 10 years ago?
   
2. What is the ROI for this event? (Not just the financial ROI, but “Return on Impact” vs. “Investment of Energy”).
   
3. If we sunsetted this event, would our community feel a significant loss … or would they be secretly relieved?

Yes, it is scary to cut things. We worry about the one parent who loved the Fall Craft Fair. We lose sleep about breaking long-held traditions. But mission-centered leadership is about making choices. And often, the bravest (and best) choice you can make is to do less, but do it better.

Stop measuring your school’s value by how many events fill your school’s calendar. Start measuring it by the strength of the connections you cultivate.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT