The Montessori School of Raleigh Board of Trustees would like to express its heart-felt thanks to the following people who sacrificed countless hours to participate in MSR’s Design Thinking Process:
Design Thinking 2012-2013
Committee Members
Leadership Group:
Trustees Faculty/Staff Parents
BJ Stolz Shobhna Patel Ashley Techet Nancy Errichetti Aubrie Hile-Hoffer Dan Barker Holly Crumpler Kaley Mansour
Jo Caplan Jean Wharton Chad Harrell Caroline Eidson Design Thinking Committee:
Trustees Faculty/Staff Parents
Chad Harrell Shobhna Patel Sara Trepanier Lisa Jones David Hughens Ashley Techet Jo Caplan Judy Albert Renee Revaz Chris Hofelt David Gehring Kate Greengrove Leslie Argenta Aubrie Hile-Hoffer Michelle Keown Cindy Waite Michael Sanderson Laura Longo Keith Nemes Caroline Eidson Stephanie Deming Nick Fink Jean Wharton Nancy Melamed Jeff Ammons Babe Clawson Michael Olander Karen Posner Stephanie Henderson Stacy Bluth Candace Olander Kaley Mansour Dan Barker
Barbara Cushing Geoff Krouse Leigh Isemonger Elisabeth McGowan
Introduction and Acknowledgements
MSR’s Board of Trustees is charged with providing strategic governance to the school, ensuring the institution’s long-term health and the successful discharge of its Mission. In the spring of 2012, with Nancy Errichetti selected to assume her respon-sibilities as Head of School, the Board and Nancy decided to undertake a compre-hensive planning process to create a strategic blueprint that would guide the school for the next 2-3 years. Our overarching goal was clear: for MSR to be recognized as the finest Montessori school in the state of North Carolina and a national leader in Montessori education.
Called “Design Thinking”, the process involved retaining a professional school-plan-ning consultant to help us engage the entire school community in detailed reflections about our strengths, our opportunities, and our vision for MSR. Guided by input from our community, informed by our School Improvement Plan, AMS Accreditation Report and extensive demographic and market analyses – a group of highly-engaged stakeholders drawn from the Board, the faculty and our parent body would then craft a list of prioritized goals for the school. The Design Thinking process began on Au-gust 25, 2012 and continued throughout the fall semester.
Now, after months of hard work gathering constituent perspectives, assembling vol-umes of information about MSR and other comparable schools, engaging in robust discussions about our core principles and priorities, and with hundreds of hours of time volunteered by parents, staff and Trustees, we are pleased to present in this document a renewed statement of our vision and aspirations for MSR. We are confi-dent that this process has sharpened our focus on what is important for the immedi-ate and future success of our school, and we look forward to discussing it with our stakeholders in the weeks ahead.
Design Thinking Points of Emphasis and Timetable
Perhaps the most important point of emphasis during the Design Thinking process, and one that guided all subsequent conversations, was our commitment to only craft goals that we were 100% committed to accomplishing. Too often “strategic plans” tend to be overlong and aspirational, rather than succinct and specific and, as a result,
very little is actually accomplished. Our aim was to identify a few areas of critical focus, establish a limited number of highly impactful actions to address those issues, and then commit to getting them done.
With that as our starting point, the areas identified for immediate emphasis included:
Increasing Enrollment and Expanding our Influence in the Community
Our research showed that independent schools across the country have encountered a similar challenge since the global economic downturn in 2008. Families nation-wide have had to reset their financial priorities, and many schools have experienced a softening of enrollment patterns, especially in the pre-school and early elementary grades that are a core MSR offering. These market forces, combined with the in-creased attrition typical during a change in school leadership, have left MSR’s enroll-ment lower than it needs to be if we want to continue to meaningfully reinvest in our school and achieve our long-term Mission and Vision.
Fortunately, that same data also established that MSR is incredibly well positioned for significant, quality growth in the coming years. Wake County school enrollment is expected to grow by 37,000 students by year 2020, with an estimated 15% ex-pected to attend private schools. And among those private schools in Wake County, MSR offers families something no one else can – a first class, accredited education using the internationally acclaimed and scientifically proven teaching philosophy of Maria Montessori. We see a growing, national recognition of the unique effective-ness of the Montessori Method and the joy of learning it creates in children. Other schools are scrambling to find ways to shoehorn into their programs tiny pieces of those things that we do all day, every day -- and better than anyone else.
In order to capture this rising tide, one of our primary goals is to craft razor-sharp, highly effective ways to communicate the joys and benefits of a Montessori edu-cation to the public – through word-of-mouth, our website and other media. Our Mission has never changed, but we realize that we must find new and exciting ways to share who we are and what we do more clearly and succinctly. We need to en-courage more families to visit us, learn more about the Montessori approach and see firsthand the opportunities that await their child at MSR. Because, once families visit our school and see what we offer, an extraordinary number choose to stay.
In order to capitalize on the opportunities before us, we have recognized the need to engage a full-service, third-party marketing firm specializing in independent schools to assist MSR in its overall marketing strategy to drive our enrollment and communi-ty influence. This firm will help us to more clearly articulate MSR’s Mission, vision and academic offerings while describing the immense value of the skills and qualities a Montessori education imparts to its students.
Another clear theme that emerged from our community was a desire to explore ways for MSR to have a greater cultural influence and impact on its current families and the community at large. Our community shares a deeply-held belief in the value of the Montessori Method of education, viewing a Montessori education as a true gift to the child who receives it. We believe that our school produces graduates who are critical thinkers, independent learners, collaborative leaders, courageous explorers and caring citizens. We want to share this gift more broadly.
In light of this desire, we have prioritized the need to identify and implement Montessori-true strategies to expand our facilities and our enrollment at the middle school, with a focus on creating new “entry points” into the MSR community. In particular, forming a task force to explore the possibility of adding an additional UE classroom on the middle school campus for new families looking for a great upper elementary and middle school experience. Increasing our capacity at the middle school campus while making MSR more inviting to families outside our existing community will allow us to appeal to the growing population of the nearby Brier Creek area and position us to explore even greater expansion of our cultural impact in the future, such as the addition of a second lower school and, perhaps even a Mon-tessori high school.
Enhancing our Program
An educational program is only as good as the quality of its faculty and staff. To be recognized as one of the finest Montessori schools in the country, we must have a well-trained and energized faculty with a continued focus on excellence in the deliv-ery of Montessori education.
oppor-tunities for continued professional growth and time to prepare for and reflect upon their teaching. Work is already well underway to research and adopt a new profes-sional development and evaluation system for our faculty and staff. MSR’s Educa-tional Leadership Team is actively considering an online system designed to foster meaningful professional growth conversations and provide faculty and staff with a single location to showcase all of their professional accomplishments.
Furthermore, we recommend taking a fresh look at our teaching schedule on the Lead Mine Campus in order to create more opportunities for teaching team collabo-ration. We will also develop a faculty survey -- in part to gauge interest in faculty led professional development.
Finally, we are so committed to excellence in teaching that it is our intention to explore the possibility of starting a Montessori teacher training center at MSR, al-lowing our faculty opportunities to both teach and receive instruction and helping to prepare a new generation of teachers for a career in Montessori education.
The Design Thinking group has also identified some specific areas for curricular re-view, in part, based upon input from parents in our latest surveys. Our goals include reviews of curriculum in science, mathematics, and foreign language. We will also study ways in which technology can be implemented to a greater degree without detracting from the spirit of a Montessori classroom.
Important enhancements and improvements to program are already well underway at MSR. Under the guidance of Aubrie Hile-Hoffer, Curriculum Coordinator, Nancy, our Head of School, and the Division Heads, our faculty has already completed outlining their scope and sequence at all levels, Toddler through Middle School, this fall. Additionally, faculty has aligned this stated scope and sequence to the National Common Core and the North Carolina Essential Standards, two new benchmarks against which all North Carolina schools are measured. This work is ongoing and will continue through the end of the school year culminating in an internal working document for MSR and a report to parents.
Improving communication in the reporting of student progress is also an important goal for us and again, work is already underway. In conjunction with the scope and
sequence and alignment work, our faculty is researching and discussing how best to communicate student progress to parents, including methods, timing and content. This work is ongoing and will result in changes to current practice, which will be communicated to parents by the end of the school year.
Enhancing our Facilities and Planning for our Future
MSR is fortunate to have two excellent campus locations, which will allow us to grow and improve our facilities to accommodate our Mission. Smart growth, how-ever, must be done in an integrated and thoughtful manner. Properly evaluating our school’s potential will require the help of experienced professionals, engaged to evaluate our current facilities and to describe opportunities for effective growth in the future. Informed by this work, we can then prioritize those projects that will: remedy any identified deficiencies, better align us with sustainable environmental principles, and add facilities and spaces that will best enhance the Montessori experi-ence for our students and teachers.
Finally, we recognize that Design Thinking is not a static process and that forward thinking leadership should always be planning for the future. Our plan contemplates revisiting and renewing our Design Thinking Plan and evaluating its progress in 2015.
Core Prioritized Goals for MSR
1. Build MSR’s enrollment to capacity and increase our influence in the community by:
a. Communicating MSR’s mission succinctly and confidently.
b. Promoting the value of MSR’s Montessori education to the broader com-munity.
c. Marketing MSR intensively and strategically.
d. Establishing a task force to explore opportunities to expand enrollment and classroom space on the middle school campus by adding a UE classroom, with a special focus on appealing to families not currently part of the MSR community.
2. Renew our commitment to the excellence of our Montessori program and teachers by:
a. Renewing our focus on teacher professional development and continuing education.
b. Exploring and tightening curricular scope and sequence horizontally within each level and vertically from Toddler through Middle School.
c. Evaluating MSR’s capability to become a regional Montessori teacher training center
d. Finding and implementing ways to improve teacher-to-teacher communi-cation, collaboration, and available program planning time.
e. Re-emphasizing the partnerships between and among teachers and fami-lies.
f. Working with teachers to meet their own requests for accountability stan-dards and expectations.
3. Develop detailed facility plans for both the Lead Mine and Middle School cam-puses, and generate the essential funding resources needed to support our Montessori mission and programs, both current and envisioned, by:
a. Evaluating ways to expand the Middle School facilities to accommodate more students and meet program needs
b. Evaluating the desire and possibility for expansions of facilities for the fine arts, Encore, athletics and cafeteria programs
c. Including in all planning sustainable development and environmental re-sponsibility, including a reduced carbon footprint, reduced energy consump-tion and overall resource conservaconsump-tion
d. Communicating to our community the importance of making MSR a phil-anthropic priority.
Hard work and a strong commitment to excellence will be required to achieve these goals. Because they focus on the core elements of faculty, academic program, com-munication, enrollment, and facility improvements, doing so will yield rewards that are seen and felt by all. We look forward to working with you in bringing them to reality.
