Just inside the main entrance to Sheridan School in Washington, DC, there is a waiting area near the reception desk.  On the wall of the area is a display that includes the photos of each student and teacher at the school.  Along with the photos are four words that summarize core values the school espouses:  caring, challenging, collaborative, connected.  I love this because I think these four words are exactly what all schools should exemplify every day.  Without caring, there can be no cultivation for growth (think about plants...if you don't care for them, they'll shrivel-much to my surprise, even cacti are not indestructible).  Without challenge, there can be no achievement of excellence (think mountain climbing...you're at your best when you've done something you thought you couldn't do!).  Without collaboration, there can be no realization of improvement (you cannot get better at anything without help from others).  And without connections, there can be no awareness of how our own actions affect others, and vice versa, for better or worse (no one, no school exists in a vacuum...connecting to each other is vital to learning how to be better, how to help others be better).

As we embark upon the beginning of this year's financial aid application season, these 4 C's will continually manifest themselves in our collective daily realities.  The degree to which our individual financial aid strategies, procedures, and communications reflect caring, challenge, collaboration, and connectedness, will dictate how successful we will be as a community in balancing the affordability concerns of parents with the fiscal prudence required by schools' budgets.

How might these values become apparent in the financial aid process?

Caring:  This is what the financial aid process is centrally about: caring deeply about helping families attain the best education for their children, even if they cannot afford the price.  In this particular year, like the last one or two, it also means caring about the difficult situations that the limping economy has forced many families into, limiting choices and making sacrifices, new and old, to focus scarce resources on what's truly most important.  It also means that the community of aid professionals must care for each other as a key support network to brace for and manage stress through another difficult aid season.

Challenge:   Challenge families to understand the degree to which your own school's resources are scarcer, while the demand for them grows.  This means that families must meet the challenge to cooperate in the application process with full disclosure and deadline-meeting discipline to demonstrate their neediness appropriately and accurately.  It means challenging families to accept that financial aid is not intended to make paying tuition easy, so much as to make it easier.  It means that each school must continue to rise to the challenge of committing as much as it can to its policies and procedures to ensure professionalism in decision-making.  Lastly, it may also mean challenging the community-at-large through fund-raising and other efforts to help support the financial aid budget in extended ways.

Collaboration:  The financial aid process itself is a network of people and systems that require ongoing collaborations, as various players and partners offer resources, support, guidance, and information to make the right budget and awarding decisions.  Parents, school administrators, school board members, financial aid committees, and  SSS By NAIS staff all play a variety of roles that begin with financial aid budgeting and tuition setting, move through admission/enrollment processes, continue along financial aid need analysis and assessment, carry on to awarding of aid and its acceptance/denial by parents, and end (in most cases) in the contract signing stage.  Strengthening the collaborative nature of this process is critical, so that each is aware of  others' roles and responsibilities in the process and how they must work in a spirit of partnership to effect the best possible outcome.

Connectedness:  It's not just that the variety of players must collaborate to provide what all others need.  It also means that each player must understand the impact that his or her decisions, motivations, limitations, and strengths will have on the others.  If an application is filed late, results are not delivered in a timely way, a financial aid decision gets delayed, and a family will not have the time and information needed to make the best decision it can about its ability to enroll.  Ripple effects are real and meaningful in financial aid work, for better or worse.

In my 10 years of working with SSS By NAIS for schools and families on the financial aid process, I have not seen the spirit of the 4 C's of Excellence embodied in greater ways than during our annual series of SSS Financial Aid Workshops.  These professional development events held for school administrators use a combination of case study reviews that challenge attendees to learn new approaches, encourage small group discussions that foster collaboration in decision making, and create opportunities for sharing solutions to common problems and tough issues that reflect connectedness,  yielding mutual growth.  All of this reflects the central core of such excellence:  caring.  These workshops illuminate brightly that the leaders in this work of access and affordability care deeply about quality stewardship of school resources, to exercise and provide the care that families need to help achieve their need for a high-quality education for their children.  Ultimately, this means that these workshops show us that the extreme care needed to deliver the promise of each school's individual mission lies within everyone committed to this work.

As the new financial aid season begins in this time of extended economic hardship for families and schools, and as NAIS unveils a new set of services and products to strengthen how the SSS By NAIS process supports you, I guarantee that we are committed more than ever to fostering and building the care, challenge, collaboration, and connectedness we all need to be successful in difficult-and in easy-times.