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������Ƶ Strategic Plan

Approved by the Board of Trustees in June 2024, ������Ƶ’s strategic plan provides a blueprint for operationalizing ������Ƶ’s mission over the next five years and beyond.

The plan envisions how the school will operate in 2030, then outlines five strategic priorities, each specifying key initiatives to support that priority, that are needed to fulfill this vision. Finally, the plan acknowledges the major financial investments it will require for the school to achieve these priorities.

Surveys of parents as well as faculty and staff conducted in spring 2024 revealed exceptional positivity and love for ������Ƶ. Respondents cited a well-defined and lived mission, with, of course, opportunities for improvement. This valuable feedback was essential to creating the strategic plan presented on this page, and it will continue to be taken into account as the work of implementing the initiatives called for under each priority unfolds.

Having the tactical framework of a strategic plan enables alignment across the school not only about the priorities and initiatives set forth here but also about how to undertake these efforts collaboratively. Having a shared, public reference by which existing commitments and new opportunities can be measured is vital scaffolding for the work of living out ������Ƶ’s mission.

1. Embrace our identity as a school where intellectually curious students with a shared love of learning can explore deeply and broadly, charting their own paths.

• Clearly articulate ������Ƶ’s value proposition, including the essential qualities of a ������Ƶ graduate.
• Integrate and affirm the role of academics, arts, and athletics into a holistic understanding of our curriculum.
• Invest to tell ������Ƶ’s unique story: Undertake a comprehensive branding effort, ensuring consistency of messaging internally and externally.

2. Continue to build a diverse, integrated community with common trust as its foundation.

• Diversify the day and board communities geographically, ethnically, and socioeconomically, with the goal of having two communities that more closely resemble each other.
• Adjust facilities, school schedule, and programming to more intentionally bring together day and boarding populations, adults and students, and adults and adults.
• Proactively work to restore common trust among school leadership and faculty and staff, including revising and implementing the recommendations of the Committee on Employment Community and the Committee on Trust and Communication.
• Professionalize and standardize employment practices, including hiring and onboarding processes, professional standards, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, consistent feedback and evaluation processes, and targeted professional development.
• Bolster engagement with all families—day, boarding, and international, as well as community-based organizations—in the ������Ƶ experience through better communications and opportunities for direct engagement.
• Deepen mutually beneficial relationships within the Concord and Greater Boston communities.

3. Adapt and enhance our program to meet the unique academic and socio-emotional interests and needs of ������Ƶ students.

• Tightly align the communication and resources between admissions and student-centered programming (e.g., academics, boarding support, transportation, and health and wellness) to ensure that admitted students can thrive at ������Ƶ.
• Invest in academic support for students:
  • Invest in dedicated incremental resources for the Academic Support Center (ASC), including individuals with specific skills in learning support, executive function, and math.
  • Identify and implement additional auxiliary supports beyond the ASC (e.g., support of world languages).
• Equip all faculty and staff to support today’s student academically, socio-emotionally, and culturally:
  • Provide tailored professional development, and better link to the Annual Review and Growth (ARG) process.
  • Improve communication processes among adults to facilitiate productive engagement and collaboration.
• Implement an iterative and systematic process of auditing and updating our academic, athletic, and arts offerings to ensure that all are student-centered and consistent with ������Ƶ’s mission and pedagogical objectives:
  • Continue leveraging existing processes such as the Curriculum and Program Review and accreditation.
  • Identify opportunities to enhance core and co-curricular STEM offerings.
  • Identify opportunities to infuse environmental sustainability into our academic and co-curricular offerings.
  • Articulate clearly our athletics vision, including the investment needed.
  • Adapt the arts program to the possibilities of the new Centennial Arts Center spaces, including increased interdisciplinary learning.
  • Identify opportunities to infuse health and wellness across all aspects of the ������Ƶ experience.
• Foster deeper engagement for students beyond our campus, seeking to both leverage (e.g., through internship opportunities) and serve the local community and the Greater Boston area.

4. Maintain and/or repurpose facilities to effectively deliver the program, and invest in new facilities that support strategic priorities.

• Address deferred maintenance issues across campus.
• Develop a campus master plan that addresses current and future needs and key goals, including the following:
  • All-school gathering spaces
  • Spaces that integrate communities (e.g., a student center)
  • Attracting and retaining faculty and staff (e.g., faculty/staff housing)
  • Attracting boarding students (e.g., continued boarding houses upgrades)
  • Classroom space optimized to meet programmatic needs.
    
• Update and continue to implement ������Ƶ’s 2019 environmental sustainability plan to achieve carbon neutrality, and report on progress annually to the community.

5. Ensure ������Ƶ’s long-term financial resiliency.

• Staff and support the Advancement and Engagement Office to enable growth of the next generation of donors and the building of the Annual Fund and the endowment.
• Undertake a comprehensive review of our organizational structure, practices, and processes to eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies, reallocate financial resources to the highest impact activities, and analyze capital structure, including debt capacity.
• Maximize auxiliary net revenue opportunities through careful utilization of campus (including the Centennial Arts Center) and human resources; pilot efforts in the short term with a long-term goal of increased revenue diversification.