High-Quality Strategic Planning

High-quality strategic planning cannot be done unless everyone in the educational community is represented in how the plan is developed, what the plan says, and how progress in the plan is monitored. Our approach to school district strategic planning involves planning meetings of a steering committee, where representatives discuss what they hope to achieve in the future of the district to best support student development.

The next phase of our process includes surveying all members of the educational community about their vision for their ideal school district. We analyze the results and identify themes that emerge from the wants and needs of the community. Those themes are reviewed by the steering committee, and the committee identifies areas within which to dig deeper during the focus group phase of this work.

Focus groups help to dig one layer deeper into what is learned from the survey analysis phase. Members of the focus group provide greater context into what they think survey results are telling us, and their input helps to focus our energy around the most pressing strategic priorities for the district.

Once strategic priorities are identified comes the fun part! We support districts in thinking through how those priorities will be achieved, on what timeline, and with what resources. We identify an “owner” of the implementation plan for each priority, and develop key performance indicators to let us know if, once the plan is implemented, we are on track to be successful.

Our team develops a formal strategic plan document that can be reviewed by the entire educational community and approved by the Board of Education, and supports the district in periodic review of progress on the plan once implemented.