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Concept Prototype
September 2026
⚠ Prototype — illustrative sample data. Every number for Butterfly Academy and its peer benchmarks is a fictional placeholder built to demonstrate the concept. This is a template a school builds and maintains itself from its own DASL reports — MISBO doesn't host or refresh it centrally.
Butterfly Academy ~430 students · Southeast day school
Overview
Roughly 30 headline indicators across six categories — every card answers two questions at once: where is the school going, and how does it compare to peers?
Concept in one paragraph
Much of the historical data a strong board dashboard needs already exists in DASL, NAIS's Data and Analysis for School Leadership system. This prototype shows Layer 1: 3–5 years of Butterfly Academy's own DASL history displayed alongside a chosen DASL peer benchmark group, for a compact set of strategically useful indicators — not an exhaustive reporting system. Switch the peer group above to see how the benchmark moves. Each category below leads with its single most important indicator — open a category tab for the full picture. See the About This Dashboard tab for methodology and the future school-supplied "Layer 2."
About This Dashboard
How this prototype was scoped, and where the numbers would really come from.

Where the idea came from

The concept grew out of a MISBO CFO listserv discussion on finance and board dashboards. Member schools described two distinct approaches: one built on a DASL peer-benchmarking view used with both finance committee and board, and another built as a current-year budget-to-forecast view. Those two approaches map to two different data layers.

LAYER 1 — This Prototype

Historical trend + peer benchmarking, built from several years of DASL data. Answers: how are we changing, and how do we compare to schools like us? This is what's modeled on this page.

LAYER 2 — Future Extension

Current-year budget, actual, forecast, enrollment, and fundraising data supplied directly by each school. Conceptually distinct from DASL history and intentionally out of scope for this prototype.

How schools would use this

This is a template, not a hosted service. MISBO doesn't run or refresh this dashboard for member schools — the plan is to teach schools how to build and customize their own copy (with MISBO's help where useful), each on whatever schedule fits their board calendar. Butterfly Academy's numbers on this page are entirely fictional, standing in for a real school's own DASL history.

How each metric is sourced

DASL's collection includes enrollment, admissions/attrition, tuition, financial aid, advancement, employees/FTEs, and salary data, alongside revenues, expenses, tuition discounting, endowment/reserves, balance sheet, and debt information. Not every dashboard metric is a literal DASL field — many are calculated from underlying DASL variables. Each metric on this dashboard carries a tag:

Raw DASL pulled directly from a DASL field
Calculated derived from two or more DASL fields (e.g. per-student, %, CAGR)
Layer 2 would require school-supplied data, not modeled here

Design principles carried into this build

  • Keep the primary view to a single signature indicator per category; every other headline and secondary measure lives one click away, not on the main view.
  • Normalize wherever possible — per-student figures, margins, rates, ratios — so schools of different sizes compare fairly.
  • Show trend and benchmark together on one card, never as separate reports, plus a plain-language change indicator.
  • Preserve 3–5 years of school history and let the user swap the DASL peer benchmark group.
  • Label estimates and prototype data honestly rather than presenting placeholders as final numbers.

Sources consulted

  • MISBO CFO listserv discussion on finance and board dashboards — original real-world measures and use cases shared by member school CFOs.
  • NAIS — About DASL / DASL Data Entry documentation — DASL data structure, comparison groups, and reporting date ranges.
  • NAIS DASL Core Data Definitions and Descriptions — field-level definitions underlying the calculated metrics above.