JAMES R. PUGH
Selected roles at Brooks School (B), The Hill School (H), Westtown School (W), and
The Rectory School (R)
Usually in collaboration with others.
1. Manage the Business Office. Oversight of cash management, accounting functions,
financial reporting, audit, tuition collection, accounts payable, payroll and benefits.
Installed two generations of business office software. Reorganized the chart of
accounts. Created an endowment unitization spreadsheet. Worked with Blackbaud
software at Hill, and Senior Systems at the other schools.
2. Assist other departments. Work with the Advancement Office to handle gifts and
track pledges, identify gift opportunities in the operating budget, assist with capital
campaigns, and administer planned giving funds. Assist the Financial Aid Office by
sitting on the financial aid committee and reading parents’ tax returns. Developed a
“community impact statement” for the Communications Office.
3. Manage the budget process. The process of collecting, organizing, discussing,
balancing and reporting the budget goes on all year long. Questions from department
supervisors and chairs come in daily.
4. Generate (with the controller) innumerable financial reports. The most important is
the report on finance and operations to the board of trustees. This report includes a
long-range financial model which ties together the operating budget, endowment,
debt, plant, and fund raising. Other reports include the Form 990, audited financial
statements, NAIS and regional annual surveys, Moody’s updates, and quarterly
reports to the bond trustee and LOC bank.
5. Liaison with trustee committees. (H) Budget, audit, investment, campus planning,
and legal & pension committees. (B) Finance, audit, investment, and facilities
planning committees. Overseeing the work of the endowment advisor was an
important part of work on behalf of the investment committee.
6. Direct reports. These included food service, campus store, buildings and grounds,
and security. At Brooks, IT reported to the business manager.
7. Personnel. (H) Developed an early-retirement plan. Terminated a defined-benefit
pension plan for staff, replacing it with a defined-contribution plan. (B) Added a
high-deductible health insurance plan. This started with an HSA feature which two
years later was replaced with an HRA. Helped develop a new benefit for long-term
faculty in which an annual contribution by the school accrues towards supplemental
retirement, home mortgage, or college education of one’s children. (W) Created the
financial analysis for an early retirement program and a school-wide reduction in
force due to falling enrollment. (R) Revised the employee handbook for clarity and
to update policies.
8. Construction. (H) Projects included a 50,000 sq. ft. academic center, a 48-bed
dormitory, a health center, and a 56,000 sq. ft. field house and squash center. (B)
Projects included a 53,000 sq. ft. athletic center, the renovation of the old gymnasium
as a squash center and indoor rowing facility, and a very green 30,000 sq. ft. science
center.
9. Other capital projects. (H) Wired the campus for fiber-optic cable. A student laptop
program. Cleaned 90 years of grime off the interior and exterior walls of the chapel.
Cleaned and reframed a collection of paintings by N.C. Wyeth. (B) A campus-wide
emergency communications system. Replaced the telephone switch with a hybrid
VoIP system. Following an extensive study of energy and water usage, took on
numerous conservation projects throughout the campus. Renovation of the hockey
rink. Renovation of the residence of the head of school. (R) Provided the school with
a NPV analysis of hooking up to a proposed sewer line in town.
10. Other periodic work. Some projects circle back every several years. At Hill and
Brooks I worked on five-year strategic plans, campus master plans, and the ten-year
school accreditation.
11. Bond issues. (H) Issued $21m of tax-exempt debt in 1997. Issued another $5m in
2002. (B) Refinanced the school’s variable-rate debt after the downgrade of MBIA.
Then refinanced it again after the downgrade of Citizens Bank, using a FHLB “wrap”
to give it an AAA rating. Financed the unfunded part of the new science building
with $6.5m from a tax-exempt commercial paper pool. This will be repaid over five
years as pledge payments come in. (W) Worked with George K. Baum & Assoc. to
refund and re-issue $13m of debt.
12. Work with parents. Sometimes this involves modifying the schedule of tuition
payments. Sometimes it involves debt collection. Developed a pre-paid tuition plan.
13. Liaison with counsel. Matters typically involve contracts, parents who are unhappy
with school rules, and employee termination or severance. (H) The major legal issues
were: a multi-million dollar punitive damages award against the school for
defamation (reversed on appeal); a challenge to the school’s property-tax exemption
by the local school district; and a neighbor’s claim of lead contamination caused by
the school’s skeet range. (B) Luckily there were no major legal issues during my
tenure at Brooks.
14. Governance and compliance. Over the years there has been a sizeable increase in
government mandates for nonprofit organizations, such as the IRS’ interest in conflict
of interest, document retention and destruction, data protection, whistle blowers, and
the reporting of executive compensation. The EEOC, Medicare, Department of
Labor, and the Massachusetts health insurance “connector” have added to the load in
their own ways. Even with an alert HR department it takes a good deal of time to
understand and implement each new requirement.
15. Odds and ends. (H) Authored a 24-page case study The Hill School Athletic
Facilities Project, told from the point of view of the board chair (available upon
request). Acquired parcels of land, piece by piece, for the expansion of the athletic
complex. (B) Pursued AIG for five years, under the school’s pollution liability
policy, for the costs of clean-up of contaminated soil. The school eventually received
a settlement for 90 cents on the dollar. (W) and (R) Assisted the school with the
search for a permanent new CFO.
16. Manager of a community. These schools are largely self-contained communities.
They have extensive facilities spread out over hundreds of acres, dozens of faculty
residences, and hundreds of employees. Very little happens on campus which does
not eventually find its way into the Business Office.
17. Satisfactions of the job. There are many quiet moments of satisfaction at helping the
head of school, the board of trustees, the administration, the business office staff, and
the faculty and other staff to pull together the many little pieces of a school’s
operation.
Contact information
Jim Pugh
2207 North Bingham Street
Cornwall, VT 05753
jimpugh46@gmail.com
802-462-3183