CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
As I have often said, the four key areas that boards focus on in exercising their role in directing their school are:
In this article, we will focus on the importance and core elements of the fourth key area: strategic planning. In almost all schools, there is a mission and vision statement, sometimes called a purpose statement or core purpose. These statements are often inspiring and aspirational (and sometimes run-on sentences). These statements can animate the school’s work. Still, if there is no intentionally organized, concrete action taken to fulfill the mission and vision, then they are simply hopeful ideas that, at best, give people a sense that the school has a purpose and, at worst, are completely ignored except by the custodian, who dusts them off a couple of times per year. Making the mission and vision come alive is where strategic planning comes in.
The strategic plan is the collection of strategic priorities and goals set in motion to make progress towards mission and vision fulfillment. The best way to bring clarity to the board’s work of ensuring long-term mission sustainability is through strategic planning. A robust strategic plan drives hiring, budgeting, educational programs, growth and infrastructure, community engagement, fundraising, and even policy development, all aligned with the school’s mission and vision. That is why the first step of the strategic planning process is mission and vision affirmation. Knowing and affirming these is central to the board’s unity as a group and to its ability to create a plan to fulfill that mission and vision.
After this, gathering data is the next step in the planning process. Discovering what the community sees as the school’s strengths, opportunities for improvement, and hopes and concerns about the school’s future direction. This can take place in the form of focus groups, town hall meetings, and parent and staff surveys. It is important to note that the data collected does not directly drive the plan, but it informs the board and leadership team about the community’s perceptions and how those might need to be addressed in the plan. For example, there may be voices in the community who desire more university-preparatory classes and fewer arts electives. The board may ultimately decide that this is not consistent with the school’s mission and vision. But it is important that they understand the desire and then articulate the school’s direction in the context of the mission and vision.
The data analysis stage also includes a review of environmental factors. This involves asking questions such as:
All these local “environmental” factors have the potential to impact the school, and the board and administrative team need to attend to them in their planning.
Finally, take time to reflect on the data. Ask the following types of questions:
If there is a lack of organizational strength, it may be necessary to embed goals directly into the plan that address this. Without organizational strength, the strategic plan faces a high risk of failure. Launched and failed plans do not build trust in the parent and donor community, but a successful plan that achieves its strategic objectives does.
Once the board and administrative team have reflected on the data, they enter a discernment phase of identifying the big strategic priorities for the next few years. Ideally, there are only three to four of these big priorities. This allows all members of the school community to keep those priorities top of mind. Too many strategic priorities and the plan risks becoming too cumbersome to implement successfully.
After this, the board sets goals to activate the plan. Ideally, goals will follow the S.M.A.R.T goal model: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound. This process creates clarity, focus, and measures progress. Each goal also requires a champion. This can be a person or a team within the school. They are not necessarily doing the work to complete the goal; instead, they are ensuring that work on the goal continues. The board’s role is to stay goal-focused, and the administrative leadership’s role is to follow through with specific strategies to achieve those goals. While the goals are less likely to change, the strategies should be as flexible and adaptive as their implementation success is monitored and adjusted.
At this point in the strategic planning process, schools feel a sense of completion and satisfaction in their work. But truthfully, the work is just beginning. I often say five percent of leadership is planning, and ninety-five percent is working the plan: communicating strategic direction to all stakeholders, overcoming obstacles, creatively allocating resources, creating buy-in and a culture of innovation and forward progress, analyzing key metrics and both celebrating successes, adapting strategies as needed and ensuring the plan is central to decision-making. The plan needs to be reviewed and affirmed, or adjusted, by the board multiple times per year. As new realities emerge in the community, there must be a willingness to review both strategic priorities and goals to ensure they remain constantly relevant.
A prayerfully considered and rigorous strategic plan can clearly enable a Christian school to more faithfully and aggressively fulfill its mission and vision.
Dave Loewen
SCSBC Executive Director
