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Strategic PlanExtending the Vision: A Strategic Plan for Prospect Sierra 2004 – 2009
CONTENTS:
Prospect Sierra students are passionate about learning. Our exceptional teachers inspire students to seek deep, meaningful understanding; to develop strong academic skills; and to become creative and independent thinkers. Prospect Sierra cultivates compassion, fairness, respect, and individuality within a community that celebrates diversity, authenticity, and service. March, 2004 Since its inception in 1997, Prospect Sierra has grown and developed to become a distinctive, strong, and successful K–8 school. Building on the practices and traditions of its predecessor schools, Prospect Sierra balances the acquisition of strong academic skills with in-depth, integrated study, which sparks the passions and interests of students. Prospect Sierra students are immersed, from Kindergarten, in the arts, humanities, math, and science, and beginning in fourth grade, foreign language. This plan for the school’s continued growth, aptly named “Extending the Vision,” sets forth a series of goals the school will pursue in the coming years. Retaining the spirit and optimism of a young school, the plan will provide the school with an even stronger platform for the growth of its programs, its exceptional faculty, the physical plant, the school community, its philanthropic culture, and financial capacities. We are excited to share this plan with the families, friends, graduates and broader communities of Prospect Sierra. We invite you to join us in the unfolding story of this great school.
Extending the Vision: A Strategic Plan for Prospect Sierra 2004 - 2009 Ensure the Highest-Quality Educational ProgramBackground/Rationale: Prospect Sierra’s curriculum and program have been articulated in a comprehensive curriculum guide and are recognized for effectively teaching academic skills while emphasizing creative, challenging, in-depth exploration. This tension is central to the school’s mission and identity. The school planned for and constructed new facilities on both campuses to better support the arts, library, and science programs. Further developing dynamic programs in the visual and performing arts will distinguish Prospect Sierra while furthering its educational vision. Due to its prominence, the humanities program has been perceived to overshadow the math program in importance. While the K–8 math program is strong in its own right, and superior as measured by students’ ability and by standardized test scores, the school has further refined and strengthened the program through student assessments, professional development, and greater faculty collaboration. These efforts should be maintained and expanded. Educational research and practice of the past ten years has highlighted differences in the ways young people learn. While the school’s curriculum and pedagogy are deliberately multi-sensory and varied, additional support for students with learning differences will further assure their success while strengthening community appreciation for this important aspect of diversity. Young people today, particularly those in sophisticated and fast-paced urban areas, face a number of challenges to their emotional, physical, and social health. The media and popular culture influence attitudes—frequently in unhealthy ways—about sports, nutrition, sexuality, peer relations, and leisure activities. As an extension of the school’s motto—Developing heart, mind, and community—Prospect Sierra is committed to strengthening our partnership with families and students around emerging physical and emotional health issues for children. This will require additional training, staff, and time within the school schedule. The school’s technology needs and capabilities have grown in the past few years. Clearly, these tools have become an integral element in student learning, teacher support, school communication, and administrative functioning. The technology plan should be regularly reviewed and updated, anticipating future directions and probable costs where possible. A vibrant service learning program is essential for bringing to life the idea of developing heart, mind, and community. The goals of service learning projects are to help our students learn widely, think critically, and develop interest in and compassion for the world around them. Service learning engages children of many different learning styles through projects that have specific, articulated learning goals and connect classroom concepts and skills to actual needs in the larger community. By integrating hands-on service learning projects into each grade’s existing curricula, we can enhance students’ ability to apply multidisciplinary skills to solve real-world problems. Ongoing opportunities for reflection on the service experience help students grow as individuals and develop a deeper understanding of themselves, our environment, and society.
Goal 1: Continue to strengthen and articulate Prospect Sierra’s distinctive curriculum. Implementation Steps:
Goal 2: Focus on emerging physical and emotional health issues for Prospect Sierra students. Implementation Steps:
Goal 3: Expand the power and potential of technology to enhance school communication, administrative efficiency, and student learning. Implementation Steps:
Goal 4: Emphasize the role of service learning at Prospect Sierra by integrating it with homeroom, advisory, and specialist offerings. Implementation Steps:
Develop and Broaden Prospect Sierra’s Professional CommunityBackground/Rationale: As competition increases in hiring and retaining outstanding teachers and other professional staff, Prospect Sierra must maintain a highly competitive compensation and benefits package relative to comparable Bay Area K–8 schools. This, combined with ensuring a healthy, happy, and rewarding workplace, must be among Prospect Sierra’s highest priorities. The school’s tuition should aim to support these needs rather than to simply achieve a specific market position. Teaching at Prospect Sierra requires a special set of skills, attitudes, and talents: a knowledge of developmental stages, a love of learning and young people, a mix of passion and enthusiasm, the energy and curiosity to develop original curricula, and an ability to maintain a balance of individual initiative and teamwork. Combined, these create an exceptional K–8 faculty, which is one of the school’s greatest strengths. Hiring more teachers of color and male teachers, a priority for the past several years, continues to be a challenge for Prospect Sierra. This goal has become particularly important as the enrollment of students of color has reached 35 percent, up from 25 percent five years ago. To meet this challenge, the school must develop innovative methods of outreach. Of equal importance is offering a professional school environment that welcomes greater diversity. Goal 5: Recruit, develop, and retain exceptional teachers and other professional staff, with an emphasis on increasing diversity. Implementation Steps:
Develop a School Culture of PhilanthropyBackground/Rationale: Prospect Sierra must develop a strong culture of philanthropy in order to achieve its full potential. By philanthropy, we mean donations of money and time to increase the well-being of Prospect Sierra. All great independent schools have benefited from the generosity of parents, friends, alumni, and the foundation community. Increased annual and capital campaign support is critical to special initiatives and to overall school growth. Tuition revenue alone will not provide sufficient capital for the school to realize its dreams. Developing and demonstrating generosity of spirit and action is important in the school’s educational goals, and we hope to inspire this generosity in all elements of Prospect Sierra’s community. In initiating its first capital campaign, Prospect Sierra has stepped boldly into the world of major gift fund-raising. Once completed, the campaign will have established a new standard upon which the school’s future growth can be built. Goal 6: Develop a culture that emphasizes philanthropic support of the school. Implementation Steps:
Increase Diversity and Feature Multicultural StrengthsBackground/Rationale: The region, state, and globe we inhabit are increasingly multicultural and interdependent. The students we educate today will need the skills and background to thrive in this rapidly changing environment and to negotiate it with confidence and understanding. To this end, Prospect Sierra should continue its efforts to diversify the student body by attracting families from varied backgrounds, serving families within a wide socioeconomic range and hiring more male teachers and lead teachers of color. Equally important is the success, satisfaction, and retention of students, families, and faculty members who are already a part of our community; a culture of inclusion and “in-reach” is essential. Finally, the school should ensure that its curriculum reflects, celebrates, and honors the variety of cultures and sexual orientations present in our community. Goal 7: Continue to increase diversity throughout the school community; integrate cultural and ethnic diversity into the curriculum and daily life of the school. Implementation Steps:
Emphasize Community, Communication, and the Home-School PartnershipBackground/Rationale: Strong school partnerships are established through open, frequent, and varied communication, formal and informal, among parents, students, staff, alumni, faculty, and administration. Communicating the school’s mission, programs, and purposes throughout the East Bay is a priority in a competitive, Independent School environment. A two-campus, 500-student school presents many communication challenges, as each campus has its own “flavor” determined by the student age group, physical surroundings, staff, and faculty. “Two campuses, one school” captures both the intent and the reality of Prospect Sierra. The school has launched a new web site and several other options for improved electronic communication both internally and with communities outside the school. But beyond the transmission of information, the school community values face-to-face communication in both small and large groups. Two-way communication keeps constituencies connected and provides opportunities for school leaders to both explain viewpoints and policies and receive feedback on practices and parent perspectives. The Parent Association provides an avenue for involvement, communication, and school support. It is a powerful link in the community and provides an outstanding Parent Education program, Lunch Days, fund-raising activities, all-school events, and a myriad of other activities. Given Prospect Sierra’s location and the abundant East Bay independent school choices, it is vital that the school expand its visibility, reputation, and standing as a distinctive K–8 institution. Future outreach and marketing efforts will focus on maintaining a lively presence in the Berkeley and Oakland neighborhoods south of the U.C. Berkeley campus. Goal 8: Further enhance the school community through strong communication among all of the school’s constituencies. Implementation Steps:
Highlight Prospect Sierra’s distinctiveness and strengths in school publications, marketing, conversations, and other communications throughout the East Bay. Ensure Financial Stability and High-Quality Campus FacilitiesBackground/Rationale: Independent education asks that we balance program quality and costs with available resources. Personnel expenses account for more than 70 percent of costs at Prospect Sierra, and almost 90 percent of school revenue comes from tuition. Financial assistance accounts for nearly 10 percent of expenses and is funded almost entirely from tuition payments. Donations account for roughly 5 percent of total revenue. These arithmetic realities are typical of younger, unendowed K–8 schools. They also suggest that maintaining an equilibrium between cost and revenue is a key to the school’s continued success, growth, and health. Tuition should be established to support overall program quality, which is largely determined by faculty compensation and benefits. The school will never be successful in establishing a highly competitive compensation package with a midrange tuition level, as has been the goal until now. However, it would be insensitive to disregard the marketplace and parents’ ability to pay increasing tuition costs. Prospect Sierra must find an equilibrium between the two in order to grow and flourish. We are fortunate to have two wonderful campuses to support our programs. As the school’s primary financial asset, the campuses should be carefully maintained and improved as time, resources, and priorities permit. When the arts building is constructed and renovated foreign language classrooms are completed at Avis, phase I of the 2000 Campus Facilities Master Plan will have been achieved. The phase I priorities—transforming two older, homeroom-based public elementary schools into more functional, pleasant, and welcoming campuses that could comfortably accommodate an enriched curriculum—were identified as essential to supporting a two-campus, K–8 program. Beyond the phase I priorities, attention needs to be given to upgrading some of the older facilities at both campuses and to reviewing the design and use of the Avis campus’s open spaces, playgrounds, and courtyards. The purchase of adjoining or nearby properties should be reviewed and considered as opportunities arise. Goal 9: Strengthen Prospect Sierra’s ability to achieve its financial objectives, face future economic challenges, and meet the goals of this strategic plan. Implementation Steps:
Goal 10: Evaluate and update the Campus Facilities Master Plan to meet the current and anticipated needs of the K–8 program Implementation Steps:
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