The Companion Shelf — Head of School
The guide is the map; this shelf holds the tools — demonstrations of the real work, downloadable templates, and exercises you can run with your team. It grows and changes between editions, which is why the guide points here rather than to individual items.
Everything here is free, with no login and no email, so you can send any item straight to the person who needs it.
Updated November 2026, for the Q4 2026 edition.
New this quarter
- Quarterly Board AI Report · for the board
- Let Your AI Interview You · for you and your team
- Can We Put Student Names in It? · for your team
- Vendor AI Questions · for your team (replaces two earlier cards)
- The Mirror Test: A First Look · for seeing your own school
For the board
For the conversations a head has with trustees: what the school's stance is, how it is governed, and what the board hears each quarter.
Quarterly Board AI Report
Five short sections to fill in each quarter: what the school is trying with AI, what changed on the oversight register, incidents and near misses, how you're measuring it, and one thing the board should know.
Send it to your board chair.
Download the PDF →AI Posture Statement Skeleton
A fill-in starting statement for the posture you lead from, ready to adapt into board, faculty, and parent versions.
Send it to the trustee who chairs governance.
Download the PDF →Seven-Part AI Policy Skeleton
The outline for a principles-first AI policy, with a line for the date it will next be reviewed.
Send it to whoever drafts the policy, and to your counsel.
Download the PDF →When AI Enters the Room
A scenario exercise for trustees built on the TRE lens, with a whitepaper you can share with the board.
Send it to your board chair.
Open the exercise →Board Packet
The table that maps the school's approach to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and the four standing documents a committee can ask for.
Send it to the trustee who asks about frameworks.
Download the PDF →From Board Report to Decision Tool
A static board report becomes a tool the board can ask what-if questions of.
An earlier demo. Watch it for the move from a static report to a what-if tool. Today's guidance (chapter 6) is that your CFO builds the numbers.
Send it to your business officer.
Watch the video →For you and your leadership team
For your own AI practice, and for the rules and questions a leadership team works from.
Let Your AI Interview You
Answer a few questions about the AI setup you have, then let your AI interview you for about fifteen minutes. You come away with one page about you and your school that any assistant can use.
Send it to each member of your leadership team.
Start the interview →Six Starting Rules for the Leadership Team
Six rules a head can set this week, without a committee, while the full policy is still being written.
Send it to your leadership team.
Download the PDF →Can We Put Student Names in It?
The answer for each of the three kinds of account a school has, and how to describe a situation by role until you know.
Send it to anyone who has asked you the question.
Download the PDF →Vendor AI Questions
The questions to put to any vendor about its AI and your data, and how to read the answers when they aren't perfect.
Send it to your business officer and your technology director.
Download the PDF →Journey Mapping with Emotions
A ready-made activity for a learning circle or a leadership meeting, with the steps for running it.
Send it to whoever leads your learning circle.
Open the activity →The Four-Move Redirect Card
What to say when a parent, teacher, or trustee asks you about classroom AI, with sample wording for each.
Send it to your division heads.
Download the PDF →For seeing your own school
Tools you run on your own school. Each one was built with AI.
The Mirror Test: A First Look
When a parent describes their child to an AI and asks which schools to look at, is your school named? Ten minutes, then a last step that sends the AI to your own website for tuition, a visit date, and how to inquire.
Send it to your enrollment director.
Try the Mirror Test →Class of 2030
The entering classes five years out for your county, at kindergarten, 6th, or 9th grade, from federal birth records and Census estimates. It ends with a view you can print for a board meeting.
Send it to your enrollment director.
Look up your county →Your Backyard
Type a ZIP code and see how many K–12 students near your school are already enrolled outside public school, by grade band.
Send it to your enrollment director.
Look up your ZIP →The AI Readiness Diagnostic
A school-level read on process, data, and culture readiness, including how the team's sense of readiness compares with what is actually in place.
Send it to your leadership team.
Run the diagnostic →Also on the shelf
The Redesign Is Coming. Private Schools Should Lead It.
Three ideas from the Ai4 2026 keynote by Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng, and why the redesign of how children learn is a place private schools can lead.
Read it →By chapter
If a chapter's "In practice" note sent you here, this is where to find it.
- Chapter 1
- The Redesign Is Coming
- Chapter 3
- Six Starting Rules · Can We Put Student Names in It? · Vendor AI Questions
- Chapter 5
- Let Your AI Interview You
- Chapter 6
- From Board Report to Decision Tool
- Chapter 8
- The Mirror Test · Class of 2030 · Your Backyard
- Chapter 10
- Quarterly Board AI Report · Posture Statement Skeleton · Policy Skeleton · When AI Enters the Room
- Chapter 11
- Vendor AI Questions
- Chapter 12
- Journey Mapping with Emotions
- Chapter 13
- The AI Readiness Diagnostic
- Chapter 14
- The Four-Move Redirect Card
- Appendix B
- Board Packet
I add to this shelf as the work happens, not on the guide's publication schedule. New tools, demonstrations, and templates land here first, and nothing on the shelf is locked to the edition you own.
Tools You Can Use Today —
Free tools that live on the web rather than in a PDF. They need no login, they are always current, and they change as the public data behind them does.
They are also examples of what this guide is about. Each one was built with AI — finding the federal datasets, reconciling sources that disagree about geography, drafting, testing, and throwing out the versions that turned out to be wrong. None of them has AI running inside. The figures come from the public record and the comparisons come from a fixed table, so what you see is the record itself rather than a model's account of it.
Building with AI and running on AI are different things, and these are here so the difference is visible in something you can actually use on Monday.
Class of 2030
Your enrollment picture five years out is already sitting in the public record, county by county.
Choose your state and county, then the grade most of your students enter — kindergarten, 6th, or 9th. Kindergarten reads the birth record; 6th and 9th read the children the Census Bureau estimates are living in your county now, lined up by the fall they reach that grade. Beside either sits how many households are arriving or leaving, and what they earn. Read as a set, they describe the size, the direction, and the tuition-paying capacity of the market you draw from — well before any of it reaches your applicant pool.
Every figure comes from the public record: federal birth records, Census population estimates, and federal tax filings. You can add up to three neighboring counties, since most schools draw across county lines.
It closes with questions written for a leadership team, and a view you can print for a board meeting — where "our market is changing" becomes a number a trustee can look up.
Free and ungated, like everything on this shelf — no login, no email. It lives on the web rather than in a PDF because the underlying figures are revised every year. Pairs with Chapter 8.
Your Backyard
Where are the families near your school who are already choosing something other than public school, and does your enrollment plan reach them?
Most schools draw from the neighborhoods they already know: current families, familiar feeders, the places where private school is already an assumption. The market around the school is usually larger than that. The distance between the two is often the biggest untapped opportunity a school has, and it's a good question to put to your enrollment director and your board.
Type a ZIP code and see how many K–12 students in your neighborhood, and in every neighborhood near you, are enrolled outside public school, with the share that represents. A split by grade band shows whether families in your market decide early or late. One thing to know: the Census counts home school in the same box as private school, so the number means "outside public school."
Free and ungated, like everything on this shelf: no login, no email. Each lookup has its own link, ready for a board deck. Pairs with Chapter 8.
By chapter —
Each item is what a chapter's "in practice" callout points to.
Chapter 1 — The AI Moment in Private K-12 Education
The Redesign Is Coming. Private Schools Should Lead It — three ideas from the Ai4 2026 keynote by Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng, and why the redesign of how children learn is a place private schools can lead rather than follow.
Chapter 4 — The Personal Disciplines
Thinking Partner Prompt Card — the chapter's starter prompt on one page, ready to paste into any AI assistant.
Chapter 5 — The Leadership Layer
— the Real AI Series video presenting the chapter's core concept on screen.
Chapter 6 — Strategy, Board, and Communications
— watch a static board report become a working what-if tool.
Chapter 10 — Governing AI
— the free self-diagnostic for the three postures the chapter describes. ·
— the trustee-facing TRE scenario lab with downloadable whitepaper.
Chapter 12 — Leading the Team
— a ready-made team activity for a learning circle or leadership meeting.
Chapter 13 — Different Schools, Different Playbooks
The AI Readiness Diagnostic — a school-level read on process, data, and culture readiness.
Templates & downloads —
Feel free to adapt to your school. One click to the PDF.
Seven-Part AI Policy Skeleton — the policy outline to adapt (Ch 10)
Thinking Partner Prompt Card — the personal-disciplines starter prompt (Ch 4)
Vendor AI Questions Card — five questions + the demo-day list (Ch 11 / A1)
Board Packet — TRE→NIST Crosswalk + the Four Standing Artifacts(Ch 10 / A2)
Six Starting Rules for the Leadership Team — the data-line one-pager (Ch 3)
AI Posture Statement Skeleton — a fill-in starting posture statement (Ch 10)
Vendor Data-Question Checklist (Ch 3)
The Four-Move Redirect Card — classroom AI questions (Ch 14)
I add to this shelf as the work happens, not on the guide's publication schedule. New tools, demonstrations, and templates land here first, and nothing on the shelf is locked to the edition you own.
Occasional notes from Linda
Updates when there's something worth sharing. No schedule. No spam.