2024 Strategic Plan

Dear Frederica Academy Families,

 

The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) believes that a school’s board of trustees is charged with two primary responsibilities: overseeing the Head of School and the overall, long-term strategic and fiscal viability of the school. At Frederica Academy, we embrace this directive and promote it as a best practice. The Frederica Academy Board of Trustees actively supports the school’s mission, thinking strategically about the policies it sets by the decisions it makes and promoting a bright future for FA.

 

Our Strategic Plan is a critical tool that guides our board in setting a budget and making decisions on policy issues. We periodically review and update our Strategic Plan in partnership with Scott Hutchinson, the Head of School, and his Leadership Team. This document is the result of such a review, which started at the annual September 2023 Board Retreat and concluded with its adoption at the September 2024 Board Retreat.

 

The various items contained in this document represent a roadmap that will guide the board and the administrative Leadership Team in the coming years. It will inform budget development as well as policy decisions and new initiatives.

 

Scott Hutchinson’s introductory letter summarizes the process that has this Strategic Plan in a position to be shared with stakeholders. We join Scott in inviting you to read this Plan and encourage you to share your comments with us.

 

Warmest regards,

 

Greer Brown

Board Of Trustees Chair

 

Parker Lavin

Board Of Trustees Strategic Planning Committee Chair

Dear Frederica Academy Family,

 

Healthy schools recognize the importance of being prepared for the future by planning with creativity and collective vision. The challenges of operating an independent day school have become increasingly complex with each passing year, and a thoughtful and comprehensive Strategic Plan can prove an invaluable asset in addressing those challenges. A wide range of external and internal factors requires an institution to reexamine periodically its mission and goals.

 

External factors vary from the general economic climate, local and national demographics, societal values and the perceived role of higher education as a pathway to better jobs, the availability of alternative schools in the local market and one’s ability to compete with those alternatives, changing family demands, and the abundance or paucity of government programs that support independent education.

 

Internal demands include the ability to offer relevant and important programming that resonate with area families and supports the mission of the school; the suitability of the campus facilities to support those programming needs; the financial state of a school; a school’s ability to attract and retain excellent administrators, faculty, and staff; a school’s ability to compete in the marketplace with other schools; and the affordability of tuition.

 

Our 2024 Strategic Plan document is designed to guide the school’s investment of time, energy, and resources towards a set of wide-ranging prioritized initiatives intended to improve the school. Additionally, the plan serves as a blueprint for the
school to articulate aspirational goals that transcend any specific leadership changes at the school and provides commonly agreed upon benchmarks to measure institutional development. Finally, it identifies best practices that must occur consistently in the daily operations of the school. Those involved in the creation of this plan scrutinized each facet of school life and determine where and how improvements might be made. This Strategic Plan now guides the Board of Trustees and school administrators as they continue to identify appropriate and impactful goals and strategies for the school’s future.

 

This strategic plan is the cumulative, collaborative effort of more than a few streams of suggestions and edits, both formal and informal, over a period of twelve months. The Leadership Team of the school served as the initial driving engine in formulating the plan. They collected, discussed, and refined a series of initiatives and codified them into a draft. The Board of Trustees Strategic Planning Committee, chaired by Parker Lavin, then reviewed and amended that document. At that point, the plan was shared with the entire faculty and staff and each trustee for feedback before being formally reviewed and approved by the entire Board in late September 2024.

 

This final document is structured to reflect two critical and distinct elements of our school’s plan going forward. The Stewardship Plan mentioned previously is that portion of the plan that anchors the school’s policies, programs, and standards to form the bedrock of our culture. The Action portion of the plan identifies twenty-one specific initiatives or special events that are essential for the continued growth and development of the school. The timeline for addressing these initiatives, in no particular order, is three years. In some cases, the initiative has a finite beginning and end as in the SAIS reaccreditation process or the construction of a new gym. In others, as in “Strengthening Communications with Parents” or “Commitment to Creating a Belonging Culture,” the initiative simply identifies the institutional goal and pledges to work towards that outcome over time. In both cases, the specific responsibility for managing the completion of the initiative falls largely to the Leadership Team and the Head of School, who will periodically report to the Board on the work progress.

 

On behalf of all those who collaborated to create this 2024 Strategic Plan, I invite you to peruse the document and become acquainted with its contents. It will serve as a road map for institutional growth at Frederica Academy going forward.

 

Respectfully,

 

Scott L. Hutchinson

Head of School