Blake 2010: Investing in Excellence, Committing to Community and Ensuring Effectiveness

In setting forth a strategic plan for The Blake School for 2006 and beyond, the Board of Trustees reaffirms the current Mission of the School and its core values. The Board recognizes that the hundreds of faculty and staff, and thousands of students, parents and alumni who make up this extended Blake community care deeply about Blake and all bring their own perspectives and sets of hopes and dreams for the School's future. This Strategic Plan aims to maintain in all areas and enhance, where possible, our position in the independent school world. We aspire to be in the top echelon of similar schools.

Blake is an academically challenging, rigorous school committed to excellence in all that it pursues. Guided by its Mission, Blake aims to be among the most successful independent schools, locally, nationally and, increasingly, internationally. Blake strives to attract a diverse and pluralistic student body and staff, to hold all in its community to the highest standards and to draw on the many strengths of its past as it prepares students for their future.

The Board's Strategic Plan is organized in six sections, or overarching goals, reflecting the six committees that examined the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of, for and to the School and its future.

These six goals represent the major areas of emphasis of this Strategic Plan. It is the Board's hope that this Plan will focus the considerable talents of this ambitious community in these six directions to make this strong school even more successful and distinctive. The six goals are:

Strive to achieve academic excellence.
Commit to preeminint faculty.
Leverage technology for greater operational effectiveness and efficiency.
Realize our aspirations for a pluralistic community.
Develop world citizenship and promote service.
Maintain financial soundness.

Goal 1: Strive to achieve academic excellence

To fulfill its Mission, Blake must continue to provide a rich, vibrant academic program that prepares its students for success in college and beyond. To meet the complex challenge of a PK-12 school spread over three campuses, Blake must develop a clear vision and philosophy for the consistent delivery of curriculum within and across divisions.

Strategies

Ensure academic rigor and program consistency by continuing to hire PK12 department chairs — As has already been implemented in the science department, Blake must expand the PK-12 leadership of a single chair who will oversee scope and sequence of curriculum, establish best pedagogical practices, assist in evaluation, improve communication, and help define excellence within each specific academic department.
Articulate a coherent and thoughtfully sequenced curriculum through completion of the web-based curriculum mapping — The faculty needs to complete, fully utilize and keep current the web-based curriculum maps. The initial mapping project should be completed by the spring of 2008.

Goal 2: Commit to a preeminent faculty

A great faculty lies at the heart of a great school; you cannot have one without the other. Supporting our Mission of providing an academically challenging education, positively differentiating the School from its peers, and realizing the core value of instilling a "lifelong love of learning" all call for a superior, passionate and diverse faculty.

Strategies

Strengthen faculty development and ensure a high level of performance through effective, systematic and consistent performance assessments — Blake must fully and successfully implement the Effective Teaching Initiative (ETI), the program that establishes criteria and a shared language for describing and assessing effective faculty performance. While the program enjoys broad support in its conception, the challenge remains to fully and consistently implement ETI across all school divisions and to find the time for both faculty and administration to do so.
Consider alternative models of compensation — The Board and the School's faculty have both recently endorsed a statement of Philosophy of Compensation that had been drafted by the Salary and Benefits Committee. The School needs to examine its current step-and-lane model and explore any alternative models to identify the one that best fulfills the tenets of the philosophy statement. Building on the Goals 2000-2005 and the recommendations from the ad hoc Committee on Faculty and Administrative Excellence, this should be accomplished as soon as possible.
Increase our commitment to attracting and retaining faculty of color — Faculty of color constitute only 11 percent of Blake's teaching faculty, and while Blake's challenges in this area are not unique, the School must aggressively address this issue by doing all it can to include highly qualified faculty of color in each candidate pool, exploring an apprentice program and considering opportunistic hiring.

Goal 3: Leveraging technology for a greater operational effectiveness and efficiency

A sound framework for conducting the operational activities of the School is essential to Blake's Mission. The School must dedicate itself to thoughtful deployment of its resources to maximize operational efficiency and effectiveness of its staff, its programs and its physical plant on a long-term basis.

Strategies

Benchmark best practice approaches for use of technology and set baseline technological competencies and staffing levels to support those best practices — Technology is driving profound transformations in society, creating new opportunities, communities and capabilities. It provides faculty with new ways to teach and students with new ways to learn. The School must establish and mandate minimum competencies for students and employees in terms of their technological literacy, and it must provide adequate staffing and training to maximize the use of technological tools for instruction and administrative productivity.
Upgrade our technological infrastructure to ensure system stability and greater effectiveness and efficiency — While we recognize that technology is a powerful tool to be used in service of academic and administrative goals, and it is not an end in itself, we also acknowledge that the use of information technology is pervasive and vital within Blake, and additional investments are not optional. The School must provide the infrastructure necessary including adequate bandwidth, reliable backup and security, adequate storage and space, and appropriate access for all students and employees.

Goal 4: Realize our aspirations for a pluralistic community

In order to achieve excellence as defined by our Mission and to be recognized as one of the top independent schools in the nation, The Blake School must be both a diverse and culturally competent community. We are defining cultural competency in the words of Gary Howard as "the will and ability to form authentic and effective relationships across our differences." By 2010 it is our hope that Blake will be, and will be widely recognized as, a culturally competent institution where all constituents are engaged in self-reflective, ongoing work to make Blake a more diverse, pluralistic and responsive community.

Strategies

Set clear and specific goals to improve our cultural competency throughout the entire community — Leadership at Blake will introduce the concept of cultural competency to the community and set goals as appropriate for all stakeholders. Blake will actively promote high expectations of inclusiveness and hold all constituents accountable for meaningful and measurable commitments. To this end, the School will undertake a community-wide assessment, or audit, possibly using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) tool in order to establish a baseline. We commit to making clear and measurable progress toward goals set.
Re-assert our high aspirations to build a more supportive school environment — Through continued support for and expansion of initiatives such as Cornerstone, diversity symposia, Circle of Friends and, most importantly, increased numbers of diverse students, families, faculty and staff, Blake will strive to sustain a unique and supportive school culture that truly reflects the goals expressed in its Mission and core values statement.

Goal 5: Develop world citizenship and promote service

Blake will distinguish its program by 2010 as a leader locally and nationally in offering all its community members an integrated, coordinated and meaningful set of opportunities to develop themselves as effective community and world citizens.

Strategies

Increase dedicated leadership capacity — The School will invest in dedicated leadership and adequate funding of both service learning and world citizenship programs that will build awareness of and participation in these programs and help develop new initiatives and opportunities in these areas.
Consider establishing measurable minimum standards of service.
Extend formal language instruction into the earlier grades at the Lower School.

Goal 6: Maintain financial soundness

Blake's ability to realize its dreams for the future requires sound financial planning. Having reached an enrollment plateau, Blake must carefully moderate future tuition increases so as to remain accessible to all. Blake has recently addressed most of the significant physical plant needs and now must maintain its facilities. The School now has the opportunity to allocate resources to the fulfillment of the goals set forth in this plan.

Strategies

Ensure continued financial balance— The School will not let the ratio of its endowment (net of debt):operating budget drop below 1 and it will attempt, through prudent management of its resources, careful monitoring of its investments, limiting its draw on endowment and endeavoring to limit tuition increases, to achieve an endowment (net of debt):operating budget ratio of 2.
Commit to operational efficiency as the primary methods of financing new initiatives — Initiatives that require additional or increased funding will, whenever possible, be accompanied by the termination or reduction of some less urgent or necessary programs. The School is committed to a heightened efficiency of the financial operation, recognizing that funding not available through such reallocation will need to come from either dedicated fundraising or tuition increases.

Now early in its second century, Blake has truly moved beyond the merger of its three predecessor schools. Having successfully completed a very ambitious Centennial Campaign and having increased enrollment to the capacity of its facilities, Blake is well-positioned to dedicate itself to the goals set forth in this strategic plan. Blake aspires to be among the best independent day schools both in the nation and in the world. Benefiting from committed constituencies of students, faculty, parents, administration, staff, Board and alumni, Blake possesses both the resources and collective will to achieve its ambitious goals.

3/6/06