Introduction

Poughkeepsie Day School

Strategic Plan

June 2013

Our Mission

Poughkeepsie Day School develops educated global citizens with a passion for learning, leading and living.

Introduction

This strategic plan looks to the future: of Poughkeepsie Day School students and of the school. The plan affirms and builds on the school’s core mission, values, unique strengths and legacy of innovation and change. It is a document that is both a vision for the future and a structure for achieving it.

The goals and direction of the plan are informed by broad community input and consultation, careful research, the findings of a rigorous self-study undertaken as part of the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) re-accreditation process and the ensuing visiting committee report.

This plan is the product of a broad-based collaboration that began in November 2012 with a board of trustees retreat guided by Judy Schectman of Triangle Associates of St. Louis. The plan was developed by a strategic planning task force comprising a 19-member core group: 13 current parents, 8 trustees, 6 teachers, 5 administrators and 4 parents of PDS alumni.

We also benefited from the thoughts and writings of many extraordinary educators and thought leaders; a partial list is included in the appendix.

This plan has 5 points of focus:

• Identity: Our identity as a school and the community we serve and seek to serve

• Program: The program of the school and proposes a design for learning to serve the needs of children now and in their futures; the key elements of that design and their connection to the mission, core values and student outcomes

• Faculty: The importance of teachers as the difference makers in children’s lives; their key professional characteristics and ways to attract, retain, compensate, support and inspire outstanding teachers

• Campus and our facilities: Ways to ensure they will continue to support, enhance and inspire the work of students and teachers

• Economic sustainability: This issue is the bedrock on which all else depends; it calls for careful financial planning, creative thinking and productive work in generating non-tuition revenue

Challenges and Opportunities

Recognizing the changing nature of our world, the plan looks to the future. Clearly and unequivocally, it presents the school with the opportunity to continue to live its mission in new and exciting ways. It is a response to the critical question of  how schools ‒ as well as individual students and teachers ‒ learn in an era of rapid and radical change.

The school embraces this challenge to reshape and re-imagine an education for our students that builds on our past as it prepares them for their future. This strategic plan sees learning as a dynamic process of creation, co-creation and re-creation. It proposes an encompassing vision for a learning life and mindset that connects Poughkeepsie Day School to the world. Like our students, the plan will be a work in progress.

Just as the planning process has been a shared responsibility, the implementation of our plan over the coming years also must be a shared undertaking. The administration and faculty are already working to launch the implementation this year of key components of the plan while laying the groundwork, with the trustees, for implementation of others. We are confident that the PDS community response to the plan and its execution will be enthusiastic and supportive. The growth of our annual fund and capital giving will determine our ability to take the initial steps required to put our strategic plan into action.

The purpose of our strategic planning process was to establish an ongoing strategy mindset for PDS. We seek to make our mission, our values, our learning commitments and and our student outcomes explicit. Our community of learners needs to know what we are doing, how we are doing it and why. Our plan then is both a vision for the school and direction for thought and for action with outcomes that can be demonstrated and defended and that are desirable and differentiated.

Our work on this plan began with asking the key questions: Why school and why PDS?

Our work was primarily informed by members of the PDS community who freely shared their ideas and hopes with us and whose thinking and aspirations shaped this plan.

Context