What if AI could help your team reclaim 2% of their time?
The Tension Every School Leader Knows
One of the things I hear most often from heads of school and other independent school leaders is a strong desire to be strategic.
Whether it's advancing the business model, developing new programs, or rethinking operations, leaders want the space to step back and think deeply about the future.
But here's the tension: the daily demands of running a school often crowd out that strategic work.
When every day is filled with meetings, student needs, parent communication, and operational fires, it's hard to find the bandwidth to focus on what's next. And that's a real challenge, because the ability to think strategically is what allows schools to iterate, innovate, and strengthen their long-term position.
This Isn't a School Problem. It's a Leadership Problem.
If we zoom out to 5,000 feet, this challenge is common across independent schools. Zoom out further to 20,000 feet, and you'll see it everywhere: leaders across industries grappling with the same friction between the urgent and the important.
It's one of the reasons I created the School Operating System: to help schools prioritize, plan, and execute strategically. But even with the right systems in place, the question remains.
What's the low-hanging fruit?
Beyond big frameworks and structural changes, how can schools buy back time, even a small percentage of it, to reinvest in strategic thinking?
This is where AI holds real promise.
How AI Can Support School Business Operations
While AI is reshaping teaching and learning in interesting ways, my focus here is narrower: how AI can streamline school business operations and support the essential work that keeps everything running.
The Math on Small Time Gains
Imagine if you could help your team reclaim just 1%, 2%, or even 3% of their time each week by using AI to automate or simplify routine tasks:
Drafting and scheduling communications
Summarizing meeting notes
Analyzing anonymized admissions or fundraising data
Managing repetitive reporting
Those small percentages add up fast.
Across a faculty and staff of 100 people, even a 2% gain equates to hundreds of reclaimed hours each year. That's time that can be redirected toward the strategic, generative work that propels a school forward.
Where Schools Are Seeing the Most Impact
Communications and Marketing
AI tools are helping communications and marketing teams work faster without sacrificing quality. From drafting email campaigns to generating social content frameworks, these tools reduce the time spent on the mechanics of content creation so staff can focus on strategy and voice.
Data Summarization and Reporting
Administrative teams are using AI to pull patterns out of enrollment data, giving decision-makers faster access to information that would have previously required hours of manual analysis.
Meeting Documentation
AI-assisted transcription and summarization tools are reducing the time it takes to turn meetings into action. Notes get captured, decisions get documented, and follow-through becomes easier to track.
This Week's Episode: What If You Could Reclaim Time?
That's why I'm excited to share this week's episode of The Independent School Moonshot Podcast, What If You Could Reclaim Time? How AI Frees School Leaders to Focus on Strategy, featuring Brendan Schneider, CEO of SchneiderB Media and author of School Marketing the Right Way.
Brendan and I explore how AI is helping schools, particularly in marketing and communications, use time more wisely and think more strategically. And while our conversation centers on marketing, the lessons extend across departments.
Brendan also shares important considerations around AI policy, ethical use, and professional development. All of it is crucial to ensuring your community adopts these tools thoughtfully and responsibly.
Top Takeaways from the Episode
1. Systems Beat Tactics
AI isn't about shortcuts. It's about creating repeatable systems that free people to focus on what matters most. The schools getting the most out of AI aren't using it to cut corners; they're using it to build better infrastructure.
2. Marketing Is Recruitment
Schools often confuse communications with marketing, and that distinction matters. AI can help clarify and support both functions, giving admissions and communications teams cleaner workflows and sharper messaging.
3. Measure to Improve
From email performance to ad conversions, AI-powered insights help leaders make smarter, faster decisions. But only if you're tracking the right things. Brendan talks through how to set up meaningful feedback loops.
4. Iteration Is a Strategy
The most effective schools create room for testing, learning, and refining. AI makes that iteration faster and less resource-intensive, which means more opportunities to improve what's working and course-correct what isn't.
5. SEO Still Matters
Even in an AI-driven world, optimizing your digital presence remains one of the best ways to reach prospective families. Brendan makes a strong case for why schools can't afford to deprioritize search, even as the tools around it evolve.
The Bigger Picture
AI is now woven into nearly every tool we use.
The question isn't whether it will shape school operations. It's how we'll use it to create space for the kind of strategic thinking schools need most.
If you've ever wished for a few extra hours in your week, this conversation might show you how to find them.
🎧 Listen to the Episode
Looking to build stronger execution infrastructure at your school? The School Operating System is designed to help independent school leaders prioritize, plan, and run a more strategic operation.
