Schools of Excellence: The No. 1 ECE & Private School Leadership Podcast

I don't bring guests onto this show very often. Most weeks it's just you and me, working through leadership, one honest conversation at a time. But every so often I want to hand you a different voice, because getting to witness yourself in someone else's story is powerful in a way I can't always create alone.

This week that voice is Kate Young. Kate and I have been friends for a while, along with her cousin Carrie, and we've done a lot together in the childcare space through our ongoing "Childcare Conversations." She's spent the last 30 years...

You coach her. You remind her. You give her grace, adjust the deadline, understand her season, and hope this is finally the time it sticks. Then you're back on the ride again.

I was on a coaching call recently with a group of owners, and I asked them to think about someone on their team who isn't delivering predictably, reliably, and consistently. Not the obvious underperformer, the one everyone already knows isn't working out. I mean the person you're actually invested in. The one you keep coaching. The one you keep training. The one you keep giving...

How many things in your life look functional only because you've become exceptionally good at compensating for what isn't? That's the question I can't stop asking, and it's the reason I started This Can't Be Normal, a new thinking space on Substack.

This episode is a little different. I'm not teaching a framework or walking you through five steps. Instead, I'm pulling back the curtain on why I started writing publicly about the questions I don't have answers to yet, questions about responsibility, caretaking, competence, and what we've all quietly agreed to normalize.

It started...

Your staff is the biggest line item in your budget. Which also means your schedule can be the biggest leak in your school, and most leaders don't even know it's happening.

In this episode, Chanie is breaking down schedule efficiency: not "do you have enough staff," but do you have a strategic coverage system. She walks through a real audit where a single scheduling fix uncovered nearly $30,000 a year in savings, and why chasing more enrollment isn't always the answer when the leak is sitting in your own schedule.

This episode covers strategic coverage versus...

What if the thing that finally moves the needle in your school isn't a new system, but a phone call?

This is the final episode in our three-part series on the power of community, and today we're bringing it all together: thriving together, the strength of collective wellness. We're talking about how the people you surround yourself with shape your health, your growth, your business, and honestly, your whole trajectory as a leader.

I open with a quote from Jim Rohn: you are the average of the five people you spend the most time around...

Have you ever sat in a staff meeting and realized it's the same three people talking every single time? That's not community. That's a room full of people who've learned it's safer to stay quiet.

This week I'm back with Part 2 of our series on the power of community, and today we're going Beyond Borders. I'm talking about how the connections you build, whether that's at a conference, in your staff meeting, or inside an online community, ripple out into real, local impact at your school. We're talking about why dissent is actually a sign of a...

You've got hundreds of kids in the building, dozens of teachers on your team, and parents lined up at pickup every single day. So why do you still feel completely alone?

This week, I'm kicking off a brand new three-part series on the podcast all about the power of community, because nourishing the human spirit is just as important as nourishing your business. In this first episode, we're talking about embracing connection, the heartbeat of everything else we'll cover in this series.

I've been running Schools of Excellence since 2016, and if there's one thing I...

LaShawn Bridges has run Blessed Beginnings Learning Center in Detroit for 27 years. She's been through a recession. She's been through COVID. And she'll tell you the hardest season of her whole career wasn't either of those. It was learning how to stop being everyone's answer.

I love bringing owners into this space because the shape of the story tends to rhyme, even when the details don't. LaShawn came to me in survival mode. She had policies. She had procedures. She had disciplinary systems on paper. And she still couldn't leave her building without holding her breath.

You gave the perfect tour. The parent loved everything. And then they enrolled somewhere else.

If that scenario makes you want to scream into a pillow, this episode is for you. In today's episode, I'm walking you through the four silent saboteurs quietly costing you enrollment: the first impression gap, the trust signals your team is missing, the confidence gap, and the follow-through factor. None of these have anything to do with your program quality. All of them have everything to do with how you communicate it.

I share real stories from schools I've worked...

I want you to think about the last stack of unanswered inquiries sitting in your inbox. The missed calls. The tour you meant to follow up on three days ago. If you're a school leader who feels like you're working harder than ever and your enrollment numbers still won't budge, this episode is for you.

I've audited hundreds of school leader schedules over the years, and here's what I keep finding. The schools that are full, the ones with waitlists and a reputation that does the marketing for them, aren't winning because of a bigger budget or...

You don't have one type of parent in your school. You have three, four, maybe five. And if your marketing, your website, and your enrollment tours are all speaking to the same imaginary "average" parent, that's exactly why some of your best families are scrolling right past you.

In this episode, Chanie breaks down the Parent Archetype framework, a structured way to figure out who is actually enrolling in your center, what they care about, and how to stop guessing at your marketing and start speaking directly to the families in front of you.

This...

You don't need a bigger ad budget to fill your classrooms this month. You need a plan you can actually execute in the next 30 days, and that is exactly what I'm walking you through in this episode.

Right now, you're probably in one of two camps. Maybe enrollment is humming along, you've got a waitlist, and you just raised tuition again. Or maybe you're in a season where things feel harder. Parent retention has dipped, you've had a wave of families leave, or you just opened two new classrooms after an acquisition or a hiring spree and...

What if I told you one of our clients added 80 new families to her enrollment for the upcoming school year, and five more who enrolled on the spot, in under 30 days? Not through luck. Not through crossing her fingers and hoping tours would convert. Through a system.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the enrollment gear: what it actually looks like to build an enrollment ecosystem instead of just doing enrollment activity. I'm sharing the real story of a client, Missy, who runs multiple locations and turned one of her struggling centers around by building accountability...

You already know your enrollment is down. You already know payroll is eating you alive. You already know two of your best teachers just gave notice. But have you actually looked at your calendar?

In this episode, I'm walking you through something I say to our clients until I'm blue in the face: every single problem you're dealing with in your center right now, profit, staff retention, parent retention, enrollment, traces back to your calendar. Not your marketing. Not your staff. Your calendar.

This isn't a time management pep talk. This is the actual mechanism...

Ever notice how the first staff meeting of the year gets the ironed tablecloths, the good snacks, and the outfit you actually planned in advance... and then somehow still leaves your team overwhelmed instead of inspired?

That's the paradox we're unpacking on this episode. As a new school year gets underway, it's tempting to use that first meeting to hand your team everything you think is mission critical, all at once. Handbook. Policies. Vision. Values. Classroom management. Every important thing you've been sitting on, verbally dumped into one meeting because it finally feels like the right moment...

What happens when you've done everything right, built the SOPs, color-coded the calendars, created the checklists, and your business still finds a way to make you sick?

That's exactly where this week's guest, Kathy Gray, found herself. Kathy is the owner of Creative Critters, a growing early childhood education company based in Virginia with five centers (and counting). She's been part of the Schools of Excellence community for years, and in this conversation, she gets real about what it actually looked like to lead “with empathy first” and what it cost her.

If you've ever felt...

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Jessica Hampton and Katie Dank on Child Care Confidential, and about ten minutes in, Jessica said, "You just described my life." That's usually how these conversations go.

We talked about what's in This Can't Be Normal, and specifically about why a bigger team can still leave a leader feeling completely alone. We got into the difference between systems, standards, and rhythms, why "getting buy-in" is often a leader avoiding a hard conversation instead of building real alignment, and why waking up at 2 am with your brain looping isn't a...

Earlier in the week, we talked about micromanaging, the first thing that shows up in what I call the delegation dip. Today we're moving into the second thing: neglect.

Neglect doesn't look like yelling or control. It looks like handing someone the reins and walking away, especially when they seem competent enough that you assume they don't need guidance. I want to share a story that plays out in schools constantly, where a leader hires someone highly capable, assumes competence means they don't need training, and unintentionally leaves them to fend for themselves.

We'll talk...

You've probably been told you can't delegate because you're a control freak or a perfectionist. This episode kicks off a new series called the Delegation Dip, and Chanie makes the case that sometimes holding onto a task is wisdom, not fear.

- Why delegating a task and delegating an outcome goal are different skills

- The difference between a taskmaster and a profit warrior on your team

- What the delegation dip is and why efficiency drops after you hand something off

- The real, fear based root of micromanagement

Ever given a teacher feedback and watched her shut down right in front of you? This week, Chanie breaks down the real difference between feedback and feed forward, and why one keeps your team stuck while the other actually helps them grow.

- Why feedback can trigger fight, flight, or freeze in your team

- A real coaching story about a curriculum specialist who was hypercritical with one age group

- The exact questions that help a teacher see her own blind spots

- How often you should be running formal...

Why do your school's systems keep breaking, even after you've built the SOPs and invested in outside help? Chanie explains the real pattern behind it, and it isn't a discipline problem.

In this episode:

- Why even a $2.1 million consulting investment couldn't fix one leader's system

- The real reason caretakers break their own rules under pressure

- The four-part framework every system needs to actually hold: standard, ownership, rhythm, response

- How to start noticing the invisible ways you rescue your team from consequences

Tune in...

Two of the trickiest drama symptoms to spot -- and the eight traits of leadership that replace them.

In this episode, Chanie finishes the drama symptoms series with a look at manipulation and inconsistent actions and behaviors. Key topics include:

Sharon Jayakumar owns a Reggio-inspired school of nearly 200 children in Philadelphia and a few years ago, she almost walked away from all of it. Not because her school was failing. Because growing without infrastructure was taking everything she had.

In this episode, Sharon and Chanie talk about what changed when she stopped going it alone. Key topics include:

Is drama quietly draining your school culture? In Part 2 of the Decoding Your Culture series, Chanie breaks down three signs that drama has taken root in your center, using real stories from real school leaders.

In this episode:

You hired a team so you wouldn't have to carry it all — so why does it feel like you're carrying more than ever?

In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski breaks down the ownership gap that keeps school leaders stuck and alone, no matter how big their team gets. You'll learn:

Your school has a culture right now. The question is whether you actually know what it's saying.

In Part 1 of the Culture Decoder series, Chanie Wilschanski breaks down what company culture actually is, what it isn't, and how to start reading the emotional data already showing up in your building. You'll learn:

- Why perks and team events are not culture (and what actually is)

- How to identify your school's core cultural tension

- Why negative emotions are your most valuable data

- The first step of the...

Accountability conversations going sideways in your school? The problem might not be your staff — it might be where you're starting the conversation.

In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski breaks down why most accountability problems are actually identity problems — and why gratitude is the missing foundation. You'll learn:

- Why feedback feels like a personal attack (even when it isn't)

- How identity and worth impact your team's ability to hear hard truths

- Why gratitude and accountability are two sides of the same coin

- The question that changes how you...

You survived the school year. So why doesn't summer feel like relief? In this episode, Chanie pulls from her book This Can't Be Normal to talk about why rest alone can't fix exhaustion — and what school leaders really need to recalibrate.

- Why your nervous system is still bracing after the school year ends

- The difference between achievement and integration

- What it means to mortgage your identity to your school

- The question that shifts everything about how you experience summer

- How rhythms and anchors create st...

Summer hits every school. The leaders who make it through without spiraling are the ones who built something before the season arrived.

In this episode, Chanie breaks down why summer disruption is completely predictable — and why most school leaders keep getting blindsided anyway. She walks through the real financial cost of enrollment dips and staffing misalignment, explains why better systems and checklists won't solve the core problem, and introduces the Standards Installation Toolkit for leaders ready to stop being the centralized shock absorber in their school.

In this episode:

- Why your school ru...

If you've ever rebuilt the same staff training from scratch, paid for a speaker who inspired everyone for two weeks and then disappeared, or stayed up late wondering what to train on next — this episode is for you.

Chanie breaks down the four training patterns that keep school leaders stuck in activity instead of infrastructure, explains why most staff culture problems are predictable skill gaps (not personality issues), and introduces the Staff Culture Infrastructure Vault — a decade of field-tested, ready-to-use training assets available to only 100 schools before it's permanently retired.

In this episode:

- Th...

If you've ever hesitated to invest in your team, this episode is for you.

It's not that you don't believe in professional development. It's that you've invested before, hoped before, and been disappointed before.

In this bonus episode I walk through the five specific fears that keep directors and owners from investing in their teams, and why every single one of them makes complete sense.

Because until you name what you're actually afraid of, you can't move past it.

Staff Culture Infrastructure Vault — https://schoolsofexcellence.com/vault

You've told them so many times. And nothing has changed. So what's actually going wrong?

In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski digs into the part of leadership that most school directors skip entirely: the messy middle between hiring and firing. She introduces the concept of drift, why it's inevitable in every team, and the four-step rhythm that brings everyone back to the standard.

What happens when the success you worked so hard to build starts to feel like survival?

In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski joins radio host Nachum Segal on JM in the AM to talk about her new book, This Can't Be Normal. They cover the invisible weight of school leadership, why burnout is a rhythm problem not a workload problem, and what it actually looks like to lead a school sustainably, without running yourself into the ground.

If you've ever wondered why leading well still feels so hard, this conversation is for you.

This...

What does it actually look like to triple your income, have your most profitable year ever, and still be home for dinner?

In this member spotlight, Chanie sits down with Aliyah Johnson Roberts — owner of two early childhood education centers in Philadelphia — to talk about the real story behind her growth. A few years ago, Aliyah was sitting in her office until six o'clock every evening, not because anyone needed her there, but because she had convinced herself she had to be.

Aliyah shares how she shifted from overfunctioning school owner to visionary CEO, and what...

If a teacher called out tomorrow, do you know what it's actually costing your school? Not just money, your time, too.

In this bonus episode, Chanie breaks down why most call out policies collapse the moment pressure walks in the door, what it means to pressure test your school's infrastructure, and how to build a call out standard that holds even when you're short-staffed, short on sleep, and short on patience.

This one started as a Facebook Live, and the response was loud enough that it needed to be on the podcast.

Learn...

Your school isn't losing money because of bad teachers or wrong pricing. It's losing it in the patterns you've started to normalize.

Chanie Wilschanski breaks down four profit blind spots that quietly drain revenue from childcare centers and early childhood education schools — from the false comfort of high occupancy rates to the $100,000 follow-up mistake one school owner didn't see coming.

Get The Call Out Solution — A focused system to expose and fix one of the most common money leaks in childcare operations. Includes a cost calculator, training, and an installable standard to reduce call-outs and stab...

School owner Charlie Marcotty spent nearly 29 years building something remarkable and then watched it fracture under the weight of rapid growth. Eight allegations, four directors in three months, 50% staff turnover. In this episode, Chanie breaks down exactly how Charlie came back from the edge using rhythm-based leadership and what that means for every school leader who feels like they're barely holding it all together.

If Charlie's story resonated, we'd love for you to:

Summer enrollment feeling unpredictable? It's not about effort, it's about infrastructure. In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski breaks down why school leaders keep losing leads they already have, why families are waiting longer to commit, and what it actually looks like to build an enrollment system that converts delayed decisions and compounds over time. If enrollment feels reactive, this episode is for you.

Resources Mentioned:

Enrollment Engine: https://discovered.thrivecart.com/the-enrollment-engine-curriculum-only/

Every year, school owners sit down with their accountants and ask the same dangerous question. In this episode, Chanie explains why "what should I cut?" is a shrinking strategy, and walks you through where your school is actually leaking profit right now.

Resources + Links Mentioned:

Reclaim $2,000+/month by fixing the money leaks without adding enrollment in the Increase Your Profit Workshop: https://discovered.thrivecart.com/financial-gear-workshop

Consistency sounds so simple. Show up. Do the thing. Repeat.

So why does it feel like standing at the edge of a cliff?

Consistency isn't boring. It's vulnerable. In this episode, Chanie Wilschanski explores why high-achieving school leaders resist steady rhythms, how perfectionism masquerades as inconsistency, and why return, not perfection, is what sustainable leadership is built on. If you've been doing the work and wondering why nothing seems to change yet, this one is for you.

Resources mentioned in this episode: