New Russian School Case Study

1) If you were called in as a communication consultant by the New

Russian School, what kind of information would you want to gather in
making your assessments?
I would have gathered information about:

The school teaching area. Number of classrooms, etc., to estimate

ways to accommodate future growth.

Teachers to Pupil ratio number of student count per teacher. The
lesser the ratio, the better care of students. A higher ratio is an

indication that there is a need to hire an additional teacher.

Ratio of new students versus graduating students/student drop
outs. This ratio helps in getting an accurate Teachers to Pupil ratio
and also helps in following up with the drop outs to know the reason

to avoid future drop outs.

Teachers schedules to come up with schedules that are feasible to
everyone.

2) What are the potential pitfalls facing this organization?

At the time of seeking Consultant help, the number of student head
count per teacher was high. There was even a complaint to the board
of directors regarding this. This certainly seems like a pitfall as when
quality of education degrades, drop outs increase and there might not
be many new students joining the school due to the schools future
reputation.

The teachers being overworked is another pitfall. There are good

chances that there will be quality drops with any kind of work if the
workers are being overworked.

There seems to be a real estate problem that needs immediate

attention of the board of directors. There needs to be a real estate
planning effort that could accommodate future demand.

3) What, if anything, would you do about the conflict between Shelia and
Trina? Between the board members and Shelia? What are some
possible organizational structures you could recommend to the new
school? How will these structures aid or inhibit communication among
organizational members?
Both Shelia and Trina are important for the schools growth and
functioning. Trina is good at teaching. Shelia is good at communicating
with parents and bringing in new students. It would be better to bring
everyone into a same room and iron out the differences over a face to
face meeting. While Shelia can be a voting member of the board like
she requested, it is better not to have Trina reporting to her directly
giving them a chance to carry out their duties without each others
interference for short term. It is also good to have a human resource
for ensuring appropriate implementation of the curriculum being used
in the classroom.

4) How can the board members, the director, the director of teachers, and
the parents of students interact to create an organizational identity
conducive to further growth and expansion?
It would be better if the board of directors meetings happen more
often than bimonthly as issues and problems may arise more often in a
small growing institute and most of them need almost immediate
attention. It is important to deal with them in their early stages and
when they are really small. It is also a nice idea to have parents meet
with their childs teacher 1x1 often for feedback as this would improve
the students performance which could lead to schools good
reputation and growth.

5) Identify the various turning points in this organization that caused

more problems than was originally recognized.

There was a shortage of backup teachers. For e.g., it was very

hard to cover when Tricia took off for vacation to Russia. This is

not good. Employees should be allowed to have some time off.

Insurance policy had to be renegotiated very frequently almost
every year. There is a need to find more stable solution to this

along with the real estate problem.

Number of students per teacher count was getting high and Trina

had rightly raised concerns about the same.

Some teachers were worked extra hours when they dont prefer
working extra. Kristen wanted to quit as she was not getting
enough free time. She was not happy being assigned to events
like the May Day event and Spring Raffle when she has no
interest to spend her hours on them whatsoever.

There were conflicts between teachers and directors (Shelia and

Trina, for e.g.,) which needs to be resolved as soon as possible
and they should put students interest first before anything else.