Does your district need help with strategic planning?
This strategic planning process normally takes approximately 6 months, assuming the meetings are a month apart. There is not a good way to rush through something like this, nor is it usually productive to engage this process without an intended structure, like the one I have described below. The planning process typically follows the general outline below:
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Ordinarily, it begins with a committee that includes the superintendent, all or most of the Board members (if it is three or more, these meetings have to be advertised as Board Strategic Plan work sessions), representative staff members, and some representatives from the community. Ideally districts have to keep the group from becoming too large that it is unwieldy. Also, people have to commit to the process and the meetings it will take – it is not productive to have people “come and go.”
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The process begins with the district’s mission statement, if one exists. The idea behind a strategic plan is bringing MEANING and direction to that mission.
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In the first meeting the group discusses what each member THINKS it means, and try to come to agreement about what are the two, three or four (NO MORE) basic tenets that would be included in a strategic plan that will ultimately serve to operationalize the district’s mission and path forward.
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Then, one meeting at a time, the group works on each tenet ONE AT A TIME…bringing back the work to the subsequent meeting. Members identify how the tenet will be DESCRIBED, AND what needed bullets support it. This part, then, takes three or four meetings (depending on how many tenets are selected).
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Then next meeting is to look at and consider a DRAFT that goes out to staff and community to share, at that point gathering any questions or input.
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And then a final meeting of the strategic planning group – that would then be followed by adoption and approval at the next subsequent Board meeting.