During the 2017-2018 academic year and under the direction of the Board of Trustees, Hackley School launched a comprehensive strategic planning process. The strategic plan, “Redefining Excellence: Learning Beyond Boundaries,” was developed to provide a long-range view of future school priorities and was created through a highly inclusive and participatory process.
A steering committee was formed and focused on research, environmental scans, SWOT analysis, committee exercises, and trends in the independent school and the education sectors. The school community—parents, students, faculty and staff, alumni, and trustees—offered their thoughts on priorities for the future through surveys conducted at the outset of the process. As the work unfolded, the community received monthly updates on the process.
To build a base of sound information and to guide the planning process, the school enlisted the assistance of a research and planning firm, Ian Symmonds & Associates (ISA). ISA invested time and effort to learn about Hackley through a comprehensive research effort that included stakeholder surveys, competitive and educational landscape analysis, market segmentation, and demographic trends. This information laid the foundation for sound assumptions about the future.
The strategic planning steering committee worked collaboratively through a series of exercises designed to establish priorities based upon the research findings. This process culminated in the summer of 2018, with the steering committee developing a small set of priorities for future focus. With input from a series of representative working groups, the steering committee expanded upon emerging priorities to outline specific initiatives, action plans, and a final series of sequenced priorities.
Each strategic goal contains several initiatives and numerous action plans. While not elaborated upon within this document, additional implementation details, such as costs and metrics of success, will continue to be developed and refined throughout the implementation process.