Why Strategic Planning?
The landscape of education is continually changing. In the face of this change, school boards can either be totally reactive--simply responding as best as possible to the socioeconomic forces at work--or proactive--identifying forces at work both within the school system and external to it and developing a deliberate, well thought out plan for dealing with those factors. As leaders of your school district, it's important for the board of education--often in concert with other district leaders--to look in to the future and anticipate opportunities and roadblocks for preparing your students to be successful.

Strategic Planning and Goal-Setting Options
MASB offers a wide range of strategic planning and goal setting services to school districts. From comprehensive processes that include full population input, use of strategic planning teams representing all stakeholders, use of district educational data and training for action plan committees to more streamlined processes that focus on district goal-setting. Each process is customized to your local district needs. MASB facilitators have extensive experience working with K-12 planning processes and working with board/superintendent teams. They can help develop a process to meet the needs of your district, large or small.

What Strategic Planning/Goal-Setting Can Do For You
Every school district can benefit from strategic planning. The purposes of educational strategic planning include:

• Provide a framework to intentionally and collaboratively seek and utilize the input of stakeholders.
• Create an opportunity to develop, review or revise the mission, vision and beliefs of the district.
• Share a process for establishing both long- and short-term goals that are based on data and that drive decisions focused on increasing student achievement.
• Create a plan of implementation, evaluation and improvement that's system-wide and continuous.
• Provide a process to allocate scarce resources.