Mark Day School 2014 Strategic Plan

2014 STRATEGIC PLANINSPIRING, CONNECTING, ADVANCING

OUR LEARNING COMMUNITY

Mark Day School discovers and nurtures what is finest in each child in a vibrant and inclusive learning community. Innovative and full of heart, Mark Day School strives to develop well-rounded critical thinkers in a challenging program that fosters academic excellence and responsible world citizenship.

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TEACHING& LEARNING

Classroompractice

StudentAssessment

Structures & Support

COMMUNITY

Inclusivity

Outreach

EvaluateProgress

ConnectionsTIME & SPACE

Community

Teaching & learning

FINANCIALEXCELLENCE

PhilanthropyTens

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Growth

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Introduction

Vision

Process

PLAN

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The 2014 Mark Day School Strategic Plan builds on the school’s strong tradition of nurturing in

each of our students their inherent kindness, curiosity, empathy, and love of learning. Working

side by side with caring, talented, growth-oriented teachers, Mark Day School students learn

to master the skills and competencies that foster academic excellence and responsible world

citizenship. A learning community known for thoughtful innovation, we strive to lead in a

pivotal moment in education, and the school’s mission has never been more timely.

Why? We live in an increasingly global community in which each of us is called to collaborate

and co-create across cultural, language, and ideological difference. Change and uncertainty

are constants, elevating the importance of flexibility, adaptability, resilience, and creativity.

Unprecedented access to information and ubiquitous technology make critical thinking and

discernment ever more important, enabling us to move beyond information to knowledge, and

further to wisdom. Our understanding of the world we inhabit teaches us that we are part of

a living, connected system, and that our educational program must reflect and reinforce that

connectedness, between society and nature, among people, across human cultures, between

ideas and action, between responsibility and joy.

Today, fostering academic excellence and responsible world citizenship, as the Mark Day

School Mission calls us to do, asks more of us than at any other moment in the school’s

35-year history. We continue to shape a program based on the knowledge that our greatest

challenges simultaneously represent our greatest opportunities. We are uniquely prepared

to meet those challenges, and we invite you to join us in creating our paths forward.

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• Teaching and Learning for the Current Century

• Rethinking Time and Space

• Broadening and Strengthening our Community

• Building on Financial Excellence to Support the Path Forward

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Consistent with the school’s long practice of continual self-improvement, the creation of

the 2014 7-Year Strategic Plan was a thoughtful, inclusive, and highly collaborative process

stretching over more than a year:

• The Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) was composed of members of the Board, faculty,

administrative team, and parent community.

• The entire faculty, staff, and administration, in conjunction with the Board and

representatives from the parent and student community, participated in the newly revised

California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) accreditation process, which was

created to align with a school’s strategic planning efforts. The SPC used both a yearlong

self-study and the report from the CAIS Visiting Committee in creating this plan, and

the plan was designed intentionally with a seven-year time horizon to match the CAIS

accreditation calendar.

• The SPC carefully explored community needs via a comprehensive parent survey in Spring

2013, a faculty/staff survey, and the Class of 2013 Eighth Grade Survey and 2013 sophomore

alumni survey.

• Kicking off at the 2013 Board Retreat, an educational consultant led the SPC through an

environmental scan that included demographic and educational trends and a planning

process reflecting best practices in strategic positioning.

• The Board, faculty and staff, and parent community engaged in extensive discussion and

feedback over the 2013-14 school year as part of the drafting process.

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TEACHING & LEARNINGFOR THE CURRENT CENTURY

We will refine and implement an educational program that prepares students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. We will seamlessly weave traditional disciplines of math, science, humanities, world languages, the arts, and athletics with four cross-disciplinary literacies: cross-cultural literacy, ecological literacy, media and information literacy, and social, emotional, and ethical literacy. We will infuse pedagogical tools throughout the school to support hands-on projects, varied learning styles, and student-centered inquiry.

Introduction

Strategic Goal: PROGRAM Refine and implement an educational program that prepares students for the challenges and opportunities of the current century

Strategic Goal: CLASSROOM PRACTICEEvolve classroom practice and pedagogy

Strategic Goal: STUDENT ASSESSMENTDevelop student assessment practices that align with current century learning goals

Strategic Goal: STRUCTURES & SUPPORTAlign faculty development and administrative structure with programmatic vision

TEACHING& LEARNING

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Academic excellence is a hallmark of a Mark Day School education. In educating for the

21st century, we believe that students need both to build deep understanding in traditional

academic disciplines and to combine the disciplines flexibly to analyze, problem-solve, and

create. We challenge students to see the disciplines not as silos, but rather as interrelated

systems that reflect the complexity of the real world.

Research and our experience tell us that students need to master multiple literacies to thrive

in the current century:

• Social, emotional, and ethical literacy: the ability to understand one’s own emotions,

to navigate adversity, to build deep and meaningful relationships with others, to be

compassionate and fair, and to construct the foundation for an ethical life

• Cross-cultural literacy: the ability to build relationships and work together across

differences, to thrive in a multi-cultural community, to create and participate in reciprocal

partnerships

• Ecological literacy: the ability to realize that we are not apart from but rather a part of the

living world and thus must understand how to shape societal systems that work with, not

against, the ecological systems that sustain us

• Media and information literacy: the ability to understand, interpret, and create across

multiple media, to communicate using images, sound, and lines of code in addition to the

written and spoken word.

Interwoven with foundational skills and competencies in the traditional disciplines, these

cross-disciplinary literacies form the foundation for a Mark Day School education that

prepares students for the challenges and opportunities of the current century.

Further, we believe that how a student learns is essential to what a student learns. Research

tells us that hands-on projects engage students more actively in the learning process and

increase students’ ability to construct new knowledge and retain what they have learned.

We will provide students with myriad opportunities to design, tinker, compose, create, and

construct using both low tech and high tech tools and materials. In doing so, we will further

cultivate curiosity and creativity, strengthen students’ skills in STEAM subjects (science,

technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics), and develop innovative approaches for

problem-solving and decision-making.

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Strategic Goal: PROGRAMRefine and implement an educational program that prepares students for the challenges

and opportunities of the current century

We will strengthen the coherence of the educational program as a whole and fully integrate

foundational skills and concepts with the four cross-disciplinary literacies.

Emerging priorities:

• Develop and implement scope and sequence for each cross-disciplinary literacy throughout

the grades.

• Develop, pilot, and integrate programs that emphasize STEAM skills and competencies,

design thinking, problem-solving and hands-on building and making.

• Strengthen and weave the visual and performing arts more fully throughout the program

to foster all students’ creativity and self-expression.

• Incorporate recommendations of the 2013-14 World Languages program review as a vital

step in our commitment to cross-cultural literacy.

• Educate the parent community about the program vision.

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Strategic Goal: CLASSROOM PRACTICEEvolve classroom practice and pedagogy

Guided by educational and brain research and innovations in technology, we will strengthen

and expand the repertoire of pedagogies used by faculty to develop current century skills

in our students.

Emerging priorities:

• Expand use of interdisciplinary, inquiry-based, project-based and student-centered

pedagogies across all grade levels.

• Examine and strengthen differentiation and student learning support school-wide,

including support for students with learning differences.

• Research and integrate new pedagogies and technologies that help achieve the school’s

programmatic vision.

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Strategic Goal: STUDENT ASSESSMENTDevelop student assessment practices that align with current century learning goals

To better measure mission-based, whole-student growth, Mark Day School will develop

meaningful and consistent student assessment tools and practices and make more effective

use of quantitative and qualitative data.

Emerging priorities:

• Highlight the cognitive and noncognitive skills and competencies that are essential

to assess.

• Develop assessment tools and practices for measuring student learning outcomes that:

- Use feedback from student reflection and graduate outcomes,

- Are implemented consistently across all grades, and

- Guide the school in gauging our success in achieving our vision of a current century

educational program.

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Strategic Goal: STRUCTURES & SUPPORTAlign faculty development and administrative structure with programmatic vision

We will align professional development strategies, the faculty evaluation process, and the size

and structure of the administration with the school’s current and future programmatic vision.

Emerging priorities:

• Ensure that each cross-curricular literacy strand has administrative and/or faculty leadership

that enables advancement in student learning.

• Devise timelines and clear priorities and provide appropriate support to manage the pace

of change while furthering the implementation of the school’s programmatic vision.

• Plan professional development for faculty that is targeted at helping them assess,

differentiate and remediate student learning more effectively.

• Revise the faculty evaluation system to align with programmatic vision.

• Establish an innovation fund to nurture the spark of new programs and systems approaches.

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RETHINKING TIME & SPACE

A child’s school experiences are shaped by place—the physical environment where a teacher engages a student and where a child learns—and by time—a daily schedule and school calendar that provide opportunity for innovation, collaboration, quiet reflection, and social interaction. The thoughtful and inspiring design of a school’s physical and virtual environments coupled with the intentional use of time that supports the effective use of those environments transforms teaching and learning. With this philosophy as our inspiration, we have developed the Campus Master Plan, which embodies our vision for advancing the campus to support great teaching and learning even more strongly. As stated in the Master Plan, our campus should “reflect and reinforce the school’s mission and values; it should...reveal on the outside who we are and what we value on the inside.”

Strategic Goal: TEACHING & LEARNINGDesign spaces, schedules and calendars that support great teaching and learning.

Strategic Goal: COMMUNITYDevelop spaces, schedules and calendars that strengthen community

TIME & SPACE

Community

Teaching & learning

Strategic Goal: TEACHING & LEARNINGDesign spaces, schedules and calendars that support great teaching and learning.

We seek to create environments that reflect our belief that the learner is at the center

of effective education, that new knowledge is constructed through creation and social

interaction, and that mistakes are at the root of innovation. Learning is more successful in

environments that provide the space and time for innovation and collaboration, for movement

and self-expression, and for quiet reflection and independence.

Emerging priorities:

• Successfully complete Phase I of our Master Plan, the Learning Commons and Creativity

Lab, and prepare for the next phase of renovation to complete the campus transformation.

• Integrate ecological literacy and environmental sustainability throughout the

implementation of the Master Plan.

• Review and evaluate schedule and explore alternatives that create time for greater

collaboration within and across grades, divisions, and departments.

• Review and evaluate calendar year for alternatives that may better support our vision for

teaching and learning.

• Provide professional development to faculty on using newly developed spaces and tools

to advance current century skills.

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Strategic Goal: COMMUNITYDevelop spaces, schedules and calendars that strengthen community

Building and maintaining strong connections with our school, local, and global communities

are essential to our mission. We will explore how our calendar, daily schedule, and use of our

campus and Bay Area surroundings can help us to deepen these connections.

Emerging priorities:

• Design physical spaces and virtual environments that connect students, teachers,

and parents to one another, to local and global partners, and to other members

of our extended community.

• Develop spaces that welcome the local and school community.

• Evaluate how our use of time can create a more inclusive environment.

• Ensure long-term site permanence.

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BROADENING & STRENGTHENING

OUR COMMUNITYCommunity forms the heart of who we are as a school. From the days of our founding in 1980, our students, families, faculty, and staff have shaped the history and culture and identity of Mark Day School. We cherish the connections with our multiple communities and are committed to making those connections even more vibrant. We look forward to the many ways in which our current and alumni students and families continue to influence Mark Day School—just as we count on our future students, families, faculty, and staff to continue shaping our school and community.

Introduction

Strategic Goal: INCLUSIVITY Nurture and support a culture of inclusivity

Strategic Goal: OUTREACHStrengthen the school community through increased outreach

Strategic Goal: CONNECTIONSCultivate increased awareness of and connections to Mark Day School in the broader community

Strategic Goal: EVALUATE PROGRESSDevelop tools and practices to evaluate the school’s progress in building and sustaining a vibrant and inclusive learning community

COMMUNITY

Inclusivity

Outreach

EvaluateProgress

Connections

Community forms the heart of who we are as a school. From the days of our founding

in 1980, our students, families, faculty, and staff have shaped the history and culture and

identity of Mark Day School. We cherish the connections with our multiple communities

and are committed to making those connections even more vibrant. We look forward to the

many ways in which our current and alumni students and families continue to influence Mark

Day School—just as we count on our future students, families, faculty, and staff to continue

shaping our school and community.

We believe that diversity, in its many dimensions, is a prerequisite for excellence. We know that

sustaining diversity requires an inclusive community and that creating an inclusive environment

is our shared responsibility. We strive to continue to broaden our community with diverse

students, families, and faculty and staff. We honor and nurture differences in race, ethnicity,

nationality, home language, family make-up, gender, physical attributes, ability, age, religion,

thoughts and beliefs, sexual orientation, learning style, socioeconomic status, and more.

Strong communities develop meaningful connections to the communities around them, and

so we seek to fortify our relationships with neighboring communities in Marin. We launch

our students into an increasingly global world in which cross-cultural literacy will be the

expectation; we will strengthen our global partnerships. As we strive to broaden our internal

community further and build on our connections locally and globally, we seek to challenge the

subjective lens through which we tend to view our own experiences and traditions as the norm.

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Strategic Goal: INCLUSIVITYNurture and support a culture of inclusivity

We will broaden and strengthen our culture of inclusiveness and support our commitment to

equity and social justice. As we do so, we will ask: What assumptions are we making? Who is

not at the table? Who feels empowered, and who does not?

Emerging priorities:

• Refine communications strategies for our internal and external community.

• Support all students and families and provide opportunities for full engagement

in the life of the school.

• Undertake intentional professional development of administration, faculty and staff,

and families to increase cross-cultural competency and inclusion.

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Strategic Goal: OUTREACHStrengthen the school community through increased outreach

We will deepen our connection to both our current families and to alumni, faculty, neighbors,

local and global partners, prospective families and the greater Marin County by devoting

existing and additional resources to support the work necessary to build and strengthen

our community.

Emerging priorities:

• Increase diversity in its many dimensions through strategic outreach to students, families,

faculty, staff and trustees with the goal of reflecting the evolving diversity of Marin County.

• Introduce an internship program to attract and develop faculty from diverse backgrounds

and experience.

• Expand connections with local and global partners.

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Strategic Goal: CONNECTIONSCultivate increased awareness of and connections to Mark Day School in the broader

community

We crafted this Strategic Plan contemporaneously with an historic name change of our school.

The adoption of this Strategic Plan provides us the opportunity to celebrate our continued

dedication to the school’s mission as we create our paths forward. We strive to be widely

recognized as a leader in current century education and highly regarded as a strong, diverse

and inclusive community that supports and connects each of its constituents, both within the

school and within the broader community.

Emerging priorities:

• Build recognition of the Mark Day School name and reaffirm our commitment to our

longstanding identity and values. Use our new name as an opportunity to expand the

school’s brand and identity to the broader community.

• Become a resource in the community for current century teaching and learning.

• Employ and consider expanding afterschool and summer programs to better serve current

families and expand connections with the broader community.

• Expand connections with local and global partners.

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Strategic Goal: EVALUATE PROGRESSDevelop tools and practices to evaluate the school’s progress in building and sustaining

a vibrant and inclusive learning community

We will use surveys, anecdotal feedback, and demographic information to better understand

our community and ways in which we can be more inclusive and better engage with the

broader community.

Emerging priorities:

• Implement a spectrum of tools to assess effectiveness of our program through the lens

of diversity and inclusivity to be administered to all Mark Day School constituencies at

regular intervals.

• Integrate a rubric for cross-cultural skills and competencies into student assessment.

• Develop a rubric for faculty and administrator evaluation to ensure incorporation of

cross-cultural skills and competencies.

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BUILDING ON FINANCIAL EXCELLENCE TO SUPPORT THE PATH FORWARD

The financial strength of the school both reflects and supports our outstanding program, faculty, and community. This established strength will serve as the bedrock for implementation of our vision for both the program and our Campus Master Plan. We will continue to manage the inherent financial tension between upward pressure on tuition, our commitment to competitive faculty and staff compensation, and the value we place on our socioeconomically diverse culture. This plan empowers us to meet these challenges and to achieve our goals in a financially responsible and sustainable manner, all the while keeping Mark Day School on sure and steady financial ground.

Strategic Goal: PHILANTHROPY Increase Philanthropy to Support the Vision for Mark Day School Future

Strategic Goal: TENSIONSManage Financial Tensions

Strategic Goal: GROWTHGrow Balance Sheet Prudently

FINANCIALEXCELLENCE

PhilanthropyTens

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Growth

Strategic Goal: PHILANTHROPYIncrease Philanthropy to Support the Vision for Mark Day School’s Future

We will strive to increase philanthropic support to achieve the innovative goals outlined in this

strategic plan and the historic rehabilitation of its campus. These projects require fundraising

to support programmatic growth, tuition assistance, and the campus master plan.

Emerging priorities:

• Develop comprehensive stewardship program

- Strive to grow True Blue Annual Fund to 10% of the operating revenue.

- Grow the school’s unrestricted endowment by $1 Million as part of upcoming capital

and endowment campaigns. Strive to reach $350,000 in disbursements to the school’s

operating budget in order to support school initiatives.

- Implement ongoing major gifts and planned giving programs.

• Complete the capital campaign for the first phase of the Master Plan. Complete the planning

phase and strive to launch the capital campaign for the second phase of the Master Plan

within the next five years.

• Showcase school programs in seeking outside sources of philanthropic support.

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Strategic Goal: TENSIONSManage Financial Tensions

With the mission as our guide, we will strive to manage tuition increases, create a vibrant and

enhanced program, achieve and maintain competitive compensation for faculty and staff, and

provide support for tuition assistance. We will continuously address the tension that exists

among these forces.

Emerging priorities:

• Strive to keep tuition financially competitive with our peer schools.

• Educate families to expect annual tuition increases in order to fund the outstanding program

offered, compensate faculty and staff fairly, and maintain a socioeconomically diverse

community (from 2009 SP).

• Research and consider adopting an Indexed Tuition Program to strive for a more inclusive

community across the socioeconomic spectrum.

• Maintain a target of approximately 15.5% of gross tuition and fees supporting tuition

assistance, including support beyond tuition and fees for students.

• Regularly assess faculty and staff compensation and benefits to ensure that we are

competitive with peer schools, including the establishment and maintenance of above-

median salaries by experience band.

• Maintain thoughtful evaluation and approval process for material investments

in the program.

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Strategic Goal: GROWTHGrow Balance Sheet Prudently

We will manage the balance sheet strategically to achieve our vision for program, facilities,

and community as part of maintaining long-term financial sustainability.

Emerging priorities:

• Carefully integrate and appropriately manage long-term debt to support the Master Plan

with consideration of its operating budget impact (under both upside and downside

scenarios).

• Manage endowment investment and spending to fund a larger portion of the operating

budget and provide long-term benefit to the school.

• Grow and monitor appropriate operating reserves to fund initiatives and manage risk

in the present and in the future.

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www.markdayschool.org

Strategic Planning Task Force members

Kristin Keeffe, Chair

Rona Ashe

Wendy Broderick

Amie Dewane

Dick Drew

Diane Gabianelli

Jennifer Getz

Joe Harvey

Dan Kalafatas

Dana Kirk

Wendy Levine ’89

Rhona Lovett

Bonnie Nishihara

Michael Pincus

Thad Reichley

Kim Roberts

Shalu Saluja

Kim Weiss

2013-14 Board of Trustees

Amie Dewane, President

David Anderman

Rona Ashe

Angie Cohen

Gigi Dixon

Dick Drew

Wendy Edelen-Cady

Diane Gabianelli

Steve Gorski

Phil Gutierrez

Joe Harvey

JT Herman

Kristin Keeffe

Dana Kirk

Tom Levine

Betsy McKinney

Morris Noble

Dana Oliver

Terry Powers

Kim Roberts

Shalu Saluja

Oanh Tran ’00

Kelley Warner

Kim Weiss