In Wade Davis’ must-read The Wayfinders, he tells the story of “Franklin’s Lost Expedition”:

“When Lord Franklin’s men were found frozen to death at Starvation Cove on the Adelaide peninsula, the young sailors were stiff in the leather traces of a sled made of iron and oak that weighed 650 pounds. On it was an 800-pound dory loaded with all the personal effects of British Naval officers, including silver dinner plates and even a copy of the novel The Vicar of Wakefield. This they somehow expected to drag across the ice and through the immense boreal forests of the north, all with the hope of encountering another mother ship, or perhaps an outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

“The Inuit, by contrast, moved lightly on the land.”

Vanishingly few schools can afford to carry around everything from their past.

Some run the danger of freeIng to death amidst the things they couldn’t let go of.

Whether you’re an independent school dealing with creeping tuition discount rates or a public school district hoping to convince property owners to approve the next budget, all schools are dealing with limited resources.

If you were forced to toss some things off your sled (read: school) as you continue your journey, what would you get rid of first?

And if you could build a new sled out of lighter materials, what would it look like?

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