Strategic Plan 2023-24: Update on a Work in Progress

Randy Eisenman ’93, as both Immediate Past Board President and Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee; Brian Crumley ’92, as Board President; and I ended February with the Strategic Plan ball in our court. For our version of “March Madness,” the three of us will be iterating around the major themes we have heard from faculty, staff, alumni and parent community survey respondents and conversation participants. The first eight months of work, that of the Strategic Planning Committee, as well as conversations in Board of Trustee meetings this year and in the three community brainstorming sessions in September and January, have yielded ideas big and small and themes expected and unexpected. Our task is to work toward an FWCD 2024-29 Strategic Plan proposal to submit to the full Board of Trustees for their input in April and final approval in May. This summer, then, the final version of the plan will be put into a format to present to the entire FWCD community to start the 2024-25 school year. 

To avoid focusing on conversations and ideas that might not show up in the ultimate, formal plan, I would share from the 50,000-foot view: Note that these are themes that have been shared in our community sessions, and there could still be significant additions or subtractions.

• We have heard input about the general well-being of our students, faculty and staff: How can we be the healthiest school community possible? 
• We have had much conversation about our 3A’s: community members hoping we will do some work balancing those elements. 
• Life beyond college has come up repeatedly: community members asking us to consider our preparation of graduates for not just the four years that immediately follow FWCD but for the balance of their lives. 
• Among other topics, the Strategic Planning Committee has had consistent input regarding the School’s sense of community: constituents asking us to recommit to our work welcoming and establishing a sense of belonging for all faculty, staff, students and parents, regardless of whether they join our community in junior kindergarten, sixth grade or junior year. 

So much of the work we are doing is based on the long-held beliefs and commitments of our school. We have discussed our Core Values, including whether we would add a seventh value. We have discussed our Mission Statement and particularly embraced our Purpose and our Inclusivity Statement with an eye on living up to those commitments. We have been charged with identifying possible “measurables” for any and all goals we might ultimately establish in our next plan. In our community gatherings, with the Board and with the Strategic Planning Committee, our facilitators have encouraged us to consider goals that would vary from mundane to moon shots, and all of those gatherings have involved such broad thinking. 

As I have said in each of the previous updates about strategic planning, our community has engaged in the process, our committee has considered our past and our present while imagining our future, and our Board has been included all along the way. Regardless of what actually ends up in the final version of our plan, I am easily the single biggest beneficiary of this work, with the opportunity to use our next plan as a guide for my leadership. I continue to be grateful for the passion for constant improvement expressed in this planning process by our faculty, staff, student, parent and alumni communities.