Strategic Planning 2025-2030
The SDMA is launching a comprehensive update to the district's strategic plan beginning in January 2025. The process and strategic plan will be created with input from staff, families, students, and community members. This strategic plan will serve as a roadmap to heighten excellence in our school community.
The current SDMA Strategic Plan has guided improvement efforts since 2019. The district looks to this process to focus improvement efforts for the next five years.
This strategic planning process will be facilitated by Dr. JoAnn Sternke and Brian Kammers of Excel Leader LLC. They will be meeting with stakeholders throughout this school year to attain input. Moreover, a Strategic Planning Committee comprised of representatives including staff, parents, community members, administrators and board members will guide the process.
Over the next months the SDMA will be providing multiple opportunities for stakeholder input. Please look for these opportunities and take part. Your voice is important to us!
Strategic Planning 2025-2030 Projected Timeline
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Phase
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Dates
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Strategic Planning Work
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Phase 1:
Planning and Formation
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Fall 2024
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· Board of Education selects facilitator for strategic planning work
· Strategic Planning Process and Timeline agreed upon
· Invite Participation in Strategic Planning Process
· Strategic Planning Committee formed
· Review of data; Environmental Scan held
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January 2025 to February 2025
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· Hold 15+ Visioning Sessions with School Community
· Conduct Strategic Plan Survey
· Mission, Vision, and Values Grounded with Strategic Planning Committee
· Key Themes from Visioning Sessions Identified and shared with Strategic Planning Committee for Review
· Report out to Board of Education
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Phase 3:
Draft the Plan
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February 2025 to June 2025
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· Strategic Planning Committee analyses Strategic Plan Survey Key Themes
· Strategic Planning Committee drafts strategic plan pillars, pillar goals and strategic objectives
· Report out to Board of Education
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Phase 4:
Finalize and Adopt the Plan
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June 2025
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· Administrators validate pillars, goals and strategic objectives and adds annual action plans and performance indicators
· Strategic Planning Committee finalizes Strategic Plan
· Strategic Planning Committee presents Strategic Plan to Board for consideration and adoption in June 2024
· Communication Plan and final Strategic Plan documents prepared for implementation
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Implementation
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Begins August 2025
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· 2024-29 Strategic Plan shared with school community as school year begins
· Work on plan continues throughout school year and beyond
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Strategic Planning 2025-2030 Frequently Asked Questions
What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is an organizational activity that puts forth a process to set priorities, focus resources, and strengthen operations. It does so by identifying common goals to work toward in attainment of an identified mission and vision. It provides a roadmap giving clarity to the key work to be done to heighten student success for the future. This helps guide decisions and actions moving forward.
What is a Strategic Plan?
A strategic plan is a document used to communicate the organization's goals, the priorities needed to achieve those goals, and measures used to monitor progress on those goals. The plan will address both the academics and operations of the school district. The Strategic Plan is Board-approved and gives administration and staff the direction to put action plans in place to meet the goals of the plan.
What is a Planning Committee?
The Strategic Planning Committee consists of approximately 15 stakeholders representing a wide variety of constituents including staff, parents, and community members. Members will oversee the strategic planning process, analyze input, and make key plan recommendations to the Board of Education regarding the Updated SDMA Strategic Plan. This group will be involved throughout the entire planning process from January to June 2025.
What is a Listening Session?
Listening Sessions are a key process used to attain input into the Strategic Plan from multiple stakeholders. Listening Sessions are an in-person opportunity lasting approximately 60-90 minutes where facilitators ask questions to attain input concerning the school district’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. In SDMA, multiple Listening Sessions will be held for staff, parents, students, community members, school leaders, and board members. Key themes will then be identified from all Visioning Sessions, and these themes will be used by the Strategic Planning Committee to craft the updated strategic plan.
What is a SWOT Analysis?
A SWOT Analysis will be used in the SDMA Listening Sessions and in a Strategic Planning Survey to be conducted in 2024. A SWOT Analysis is a process where both internal and external factors that impact the effectiveness of a school district/organization are examined by identifying internal Strengths, internal Weaknesses, and external Opportunities and Threats analysis. When we identify Strengths and Weaknesses we look for what the school district does well and what are key opportunities for improvement. When we identify Opportunities and Threats we look at things outside of our school district that may either be new ideas we should consider or forces that could negatively impact achievement of the plan.
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Previous Strategic Planning in the SDMA
After months of work and collaboration with parents, students, community partners, and other school district stakeholders, the 2019-2024 SDMA Strategic Plan was unanimously approved by the school board on June 10, 2019.
The process used to create the strategic plan was very comprehensive. During the 2018-2019 school year, district officials worked with Student Education to:
- Conduct two strategic planning surveys with 1230 survey respondents offering input.
- Hold over 40 focus groups to obtain face-to-face input from employees, students, parents, citizens & leaders, administrators and Board members.
- Meet five times with our Steering Committee to synthesize findings from surveys and focus groups and identify key areas of focus for the strategic plan.
- Meet two times with Administrative Team members to begin to draft the action plan focus & measures.
Once the strategic plan was approved by the Board, marketing materials and a condensed Plan on a Page were created to share the strategic plan with staff, students, parents, community members, and all other school district stakeholders. The Board approved an addition to the strategic plan in June 2021 to add the expansion of academic programming support outside of the school day to Pillar 4. Despite some challenges and interruptions due to staff capacity and the COVID-19 pandemic, work on the plan has been regularly monitored by the Board, and measurable goals have continued to be set during each year of the plan.