As you know, our school is in the process of developing our strategy for the coming years. The timing couldn’t be more appropriate—it follows the move to our new campus and coincides with the transition of a few school leaders. The campus offers multiple opportunities to continue building our already strong community and to push our school programs in ways we couldn’t do in Hayes Valley. Strategy will also provide community-informed guidance (though not prescription) to our new school leaders as they carry the work of the school forward.
We have had a great deal of input from the community—thank you to those of you (parents, employees, students, alumni, and trustees) who have completed one or both of the community surveys, participated in a focus group session, or been part of a multi-hour workshop. A huge shout out to our 35-member Task Force consisting of employees, parents, and trustees who have shared their time and talent in numerous afternoon meetings this school year.
The Task Force has waded through reams of printouts containing collated community input that many of you have shared. With admirable fidelity to the aspirations of our community, the task force has organized and interpreted the data, stirred in their own wisdom, and extracted some themes around which there is a high level of consensus (this is my fourth time through this process at CAIS, and I am always struck by the level of alignment among different stakeholders as to what really matters).
Some examples of priorities with a high level of consensus across stakeholder groups include:
- Social and Emotional Education
- Advantages of the bilingual brain
- Academic excellence
- Recruitment, development, support and retention of outstanding faculty
- Optimizing outdoor learning and play spaces
- Community garden
- Food service
- Enriching afterschool, holiday and summer offerings
- Developing non-tuition revenue sources, including endowment and auxiliary revenue
- Utilizing the campus as a cultural and community hub
- Cross grade/division/whole school collaboration
- Articulating the CAIS value proposition
- Building the enrollment pipeline
The outcome of this process, our school’s next strategic vision, is the responsibility of the CAIS Board of Trustees. They will take the work products from the Task Force and look at it all through a series of “lenses” in order to determine where the collective aspirations of the community intersect with the needs of the school at this moment in its history. The lenses will include things such as the school’s mission and core values, financial and operational feasibility, and the larger context in which CAIS is operating such as our current political, cultural, and economic climate.
I look forward to sharing our progress in the new year, and thank you again for your participation and contributions.