Field Pulse · March 2026
Staffing isn’t the problem.
Stability is.
What’s actually happening in Montessori schools right now. Not trends. Not opinions. Signals from leaders doing the work.
What We’re Seeing
March 2026 — The dominant theme this month: leaders are not primarily worried about whether they can fill open positions. They are worried about whether the people they have will still be there next year.
This is a different problem than hiring. It surfaces differently. It shows up in conversations about morale, in hesitation around delegation, in the emotional weight leaders carry about whether the people who built the school alongside them are staying.
When we aggregate check-ins across the field, the signal is consistent: staffing instability is not primarily an external labor market problem. It is an internal conditions problem.
Pressure Building Underneath
The retention signal is a leadership signal.
Leaders who report high retention also report clearer role structures, more explicit decision-making norms, and consistent one-on-ones with key staff. The correlation isn’t perfect. But it is present across enough schools to be directional.
What we’re hearing: the schools losing good people are not always losing them to better pay. They are losing them to clearer environments — places where expectations and support are better matched.
Guides leaving mid-year cite unclear expectations more often than compensation.
Leaders report spending more time re-hiring than on work that actually moves the school.
Schools with high retention share one thing: leadership teams with clear lanes.
The churn is concentrated — a small number of schools account for most of the instability.
What This Signal Points To
Stability is a structural outcome, not a culture outcome.
The instinct is to treat retention as a culture problem — and to respond with retreats, recognition programs, and initiatives. These have their place. But what the data points to is more structural: people stay where they know what is expected, where their contributions are visible, and where leadership is consistent enough to be trusted.
The retention question, then, is not primarily about perks or programs. It is about whether the organizational conditions for stability exist — whether roles are clear, whether decisions get made in the right places, whether the head of school has enough margin to actually lead rather than react.
“When leaders are in constant triage, the conditions for retention deteriorate — even when everyone is working hard and trying.”
What Leaders Are Doing
The responses worth watching.
Across the pulse, leaders are responding to instability in two distinct ways. One pattern is working. One is not.
What’s not working
Reacting to each departure individually. Treating every exit as its own event. Adding responsibilities to remaining staff without re-examining the structure. Assuming that if people are still showing up, things are basically fine.
What’s working
Pausing to name the structural conditions generating turnover. Having explicit conversations with key staff about their experience of the role — not just their performance in it. Distinguishing between compensation issues (which require resources) and clarity issues (which require decisions).
What This Requires
The work underneath the work.
The leaders making progress on stability are doing something that is harder than it looks: they are examining their own leadership before examining their staff’s commitment.
This means asking: Are roles actually clear, or do we just think they are? Are we making decisions from the right places in the organization, or are we creating uncertainty by centralizing everything — or distributing it inconsistently?
The structural audit — not the culture audit — is what this month’s signal points to.
From Signal to Action
Three things to consider this month.
Not prescriptions. Prompts — questions worth sitting with given what this pulse is showing.
01
Audit structure, not culture
Before any culture initiative, answer this: do people in your school know exactly which decisions they can make independently? If not, that is the work.
02
Have the retention conversation early
Don’t wait for the exit interview. Have a direct conversation with your key staff about their experience of the role — what’s working, what isn’t, what they need to stay.
03
Distinguish the problem you actually have
Compensation issues require resources. Clarity issues require decisions. They look similar from outside but have different solutions. Name which one you’re dealing with.
Contribute to the April pulse.
Three minutes. Anonymous. The pattern only becomes visible when more leaders add to it.