Tim Nethers, Chief Information Officer, Foundation Academy

In an interview with Invest:, Tim Nethers, chief information officer at Foundation Academy, explains how the school is leveraging data, AI, and automation to support a fully enrolled, multi-campus model while staying focused on generational retention. “We purposely aren’t the most expensive school,” said Nethers, emphasizing Foundation Academy’s commitment to mission alignment, culture and long-term value.

Over the past year, what major milestones and changes have most influenced Foundation Academy’s trajectory?

Our biggest shift has been moving from a growth-focused mindset to operating as a fully enrolled school. That maturity changes how every team operates—development, admissions, and marketing—because we’ve transitioned from attracting new families to strengthening long-term retention.

We talk a lot about creating ‘forever families,’ and our retention rate is well above the national average, reflecting the commitment to our mission of Christ-centered education. We’re seeing families who depart do so by situation rather than dissatisfaction. As the industry shifts, schools are rethinking their processes, and we’re doing the same by redesigning communications with drip campaigns that intentionally support families throughout their entire journey with us.

How are you scaling your infrastructure to ensure consistency, reliability, and security?

We focused our efforts on ensuring stability, automation and security – upgrading our network infrastructure, rolling out human-focused cybersecurity initiatives, and implementing AI-driven monitoring tools that proactively detect issues.

Operating at full capacity requires efficiency, and automation helps us scale without continually expanding headcount. This allows our team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than repetitive tasks, while keeping reliability strong and costs down for families.

How would you describe the digital transformation happening in the K-12 education landscape?

The education industry is moving decisively toward data-driven decision-making. AI allows schools to analyze student performance much faster and more accurately than individual reviews. Tools can now identify outliers or early-warning indicators before they become visible in the classroom.

The number of systems schools depend on continues to grow — more than 200 in a school district environment. That complexity makes system integrations and automation essential. Whether you’re onboarding thousands of student accounts or replacing your device fleet, manual entry isn’t just inefficient – it creates compliance and accuracy risks. Automation eliminates those errors and frees our team to focus on strategy and innovation.

What do you see as the key challenges for private schools in technology today, particularly in cybersecurity and infrastructure?

The biggest cybersecurity risk is always people. Even with strong safeguards, attackers constantly evolve, so ongoing training is our highest priority. We partner with KnowBe4 to run adaptive phishing simulations, which has turned cybersecurity into a friendly, measurable competition with a leaderboard and regular incentives.

KnowBe4 also aggregates real phishing attempts across all users and automatically removes them from our environment, giving us the benefit of a global threat-intelligence network.

Beyond email, we use AI-enabled defenses on our network, website, and firewall systems to analyze anomalies. We plan with the assumption that an incident is inevitable at some point. Tools like honeypots allow us to immediately isolate suspicious activity, limit impact, and maintain user confidence without exposing internal details. Layered security is essential when internal and external threats are both possibilities.

How are current economic conditions affecting technology and innovation-related investment decisions?

Inflation has been a significant pressure point. When renewing core platforms — SIS, LMS, CRM, HRIS — nearly every vendor presented increases beyond typical year-over-year adjustments. That creates challenging decisions: reduce spending elsewhere or raise tuition more than we want.

IT may only represent around a fraction of the overall budget, but every department — from athletics to textbooks to marketing — feels the same cost pressures. At the same time, we must remain competitive in teacher retention, especially given the high cost of living in Central Florida. That’s why we’ve begun covering healthcare costs and are exploring additional staff retention strategies.

Foundation Academy continues to offer one of the best value propositions in the private education industry.  By design our tuition is significantly lower than our closest competitor, providing increased accessibility to more mission-aligned families while still allowing investment in quality, innovation, and long-term sustainability.

How is momentum in new tools and system integrations shaping opportunities in the K-12 sector?

The biggest opportunity is bridging educational technology with business operations. Historically, Student Information System try to be all-in-one systems, but they are rarely effective for marketing, developmental, or operational needs. Extracting data was difficult, and schools often settled for less than ideal processes and out of date solutions.

Today, we have strong integrations both sides: tools like OneRoster and Clever for academic systems and integrators like Make and Zapier for business systems; however, neither party bridges the gap between Business and Education Systems. We’re finally closing that gap. With a strong developer and AI-assisted coding, we now integrate our SIS directly into platforms that were manual processes before. That level of integration is uncommon in K-12 and incredibly powerful allowing industry leading business tools to talk to their education counterparts.

Onboarding one student might involve 20 or more systems, especially as they enter high school. Automation allows us to offer more educational opportunities without overloading teachers and support staff.

Seeing the systems work together makes today’s educational technology movement exciting. However, the true breakthrough is achieved leveraging AI to improve personalization, efficiency and educational outcomes.