District Leadership: Strategic Planning

The Broad Prize Framework for School District Excellence

Strategic Planning Requirements

The strategic plan is developed using a systematic planning process that engages relevant stakeholders.
The district strategic plan serves as a guide for the district and its schools, specifying vision, mission, performance goals, objectives, and benchmarks and the policies and strategies to achieve each strategic objective.
The strategic plan is effectively communicated, leads to understanding, support and action, and is evaluated for effectiveness.

Best Practice Strategic Planning Documents

Strategic Planning – New York City Department of Education

When Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York City, he made school reform a key priority of his administration, hiring former U.S. assistant attorney general and Fortune 500 executive Joel Klein to lead the nation’s largest school system serving over 1 million students. In the early years of his tenure, Chancellor Klein launched an aggressive effort to engage the community in the creation of a strategic plan to transform the district and improve student achievement. Hiring a significant amount of new talent from outside the district and engaging teams of consultants to provide targeted support, Chancellor Klein sparked the process that would lead to the development of the Children First reform plan.

1 – Children First Overview Describes the history and components of the district’s strategic plan, called Children First.
What to Notice The document starts with a dramatic quote from the mayor of New York, identifying leadership, empowerment and accountability as the three pillars of the district’s reform plan. And—in big bold letters—the district identifies student achievement as the overriding focus. Notice that Bloomberg and Klein thought of their plan in two phases: (1) bringing stability to the system, and (2) empowering principals and holding them accountable for school results.	Questions to Ask How long did the strategic planning process take? What kind of resources were required, both from within the district and from outside the district? How did the district ensure community involvement? What kinds of resistance did Klein and his team face, as outsiders? How did they overcome these obstacles? Who were their allies in the reform process? What major top-down reforms did Klein and his team implement? How were these received? Did these reforms conflict with the district’s goal of giving principals more autonomy and more accountability? What was the district’s approach to parent involvement, student promotion and budgetary flexibility? How did Klein and his team make changes in these areas?
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2 – Comprehensive Educational Planning Process Describes the strategic planning process for regional districts—of which there are 12 in New York—and individual schools.
What to Notice Pages one through three describe how regional districts in New York City create their comprehensive educational plans (CEPs), which set measurable goals for improving student achievement and tie budgetary spending to these goals. Notice that the process is focused on making instructional adjustments that will lead to measurable changes in student achievement. Pages four and five provide a similar overview of the planning process at individual schools. The School Leadership Team—made up of administrators, teachers, staff and parents—is responsible for using a data-driven approach to setting strategic goals for the school.	Questions to Ask How does New York City link the overall Children First plan to the comprehensive educational plans of regional districts and schools? Are local educators encouraged to reference Children First in their plans? Are these plans living documents? Are the major components of the plan shared with teachers and staff? Are the plans revisited throughout the year?
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3 – School Improvement Plan - Elementary Lays out academic goals and action plans for an elementary school’s 10 academic goals. Forms the core of the school’s Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP).
What to Notice The school improvement plan for an elementary school includes 10 school goals, six of which are focused on literacy and four of which are focused on mathematics. Separate goals address the performance of general education students, special education students and ELL students. Each goal starts with a measurable objective and then lists strategies to address the objective, including revenue sources, time devoted to the goal and accountable parties.	Questions to Ask Who is involved in the goal setting process? How widely are the goals known among teachers, parents, and students? How does the district communicate this information? How often does the school revisit its goals? Does the conversation start with the district’s Children First goals? At the district level, who collects and reviews the school’s improvement plan? What kind of coaching and support does the school receive?
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Strategic Planning – Bridgeport Public Schools

Every school in Bridgeport Public Schools creates an education plan that links the district’s mission and vision to measurable goals at the school level.

1 – Education Plan - Elementary Describes the mission and vision of Columbus Elementary, as well as measurable objectives for improvement of student achievement and fulfillment of NCLB requirements.
What to Notice The cover page is a checklist, allowing the school to indicate that it has completed all required components of the plan. On page four, the school identifies its mission and vision, and these are linked to the district’s mission and goals. The document includes concrete action plans to address measurable student achievement goals, as well as a parent and community involvement plan. Later, the document provides full data for the school’s performance on the Connecticut Mastery Tests and compares the school’s current performance to the targets set by NCLB. Finally, there is a plan to meet NCLB’s highly-qualified teacher requirement.	Questions to Ask How did the school develop its mission and vision? Was the process informed by the mission and vision of the district? Which school-site personnel were involved in the process? Were parents or community members involved in the process? How did the school identify its measurable student achievement objectives? How often are these revisited? Does the school benchmark its performance against any nearby schools with similar student populations? Who is primarily responsible for increasing parent and community involvement? What is the baseline for involvement, from which the school is trying to improve?
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Strategic Planning in a Collaborative Environment – Brownsville Independent School District

Brownsville Independent School District takes a very collaborative approach to strategic planning. The District Improvement Plan is developed by the District Educational Improvement Council (DEIC), which includes representatives from every school in the district. The planning process centers on creating student achievement goals that map to the district’s mission statement and creating the action plans that will allow schools to meet their ambitious goals.

1 – District Mission and Goals One-page description of Brownsville’s mission and goals.
What to Notice Brownsville’s mission statement explicitly targets higher education and responsible citizenry as student-oriented goals. In addition, the district provides specific goals that apply to key central office departments: curriculum and instruction, personnel, facilities and finance. These functional goals address the role of the district in creating healthy, high-functioning skills that offer students the best chance to succeed.	Questions to Ask How and when was the mission statement developed? Did it come from the board or from management? What was the process for articulating the mission and collecting input from stakeholders? How did the functional goals come to be? How did each of the four key district departments draft their own goals? How would you translate these qualitative goals into measurable objectives? How is progress toward goals tracked? How often do goals change?
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2 – Curriculum and Instruction Action Plan for Board’s Goals and Objectives This is a supplement to the state-required “District Improvement Plan.” The document describes specific objectives and action plans tied to the district’s core goal around curriculum and instruction.
What to Notice In the core area of curriculum and instruction, Brownsville has developed concrete objectives and action plans that address the board’s goal for curriculum and instruction. On page 69, notice that the seven objectives describe how the curriculum and instruction department hopes to achieve this goal. Each objective is further defined through a series of action steps that indicate the persons responsible, resources needed, timeline, and evaluation method.	Questions to Ask How did the district go about translating the board’s curriculum and instruction goal into concrete objectives? How did the board participate in this process, or did the superintendent’s team take responsibility for this? How widely is the document used? How are individual teachers and principals made aware of the academic goals and action steps listed in the plan? Who tracks progress against the action plans?
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