February 18, 2020 Update

The past several weeks have been among the busiest and most important in our nearly eight-month strategic planning process.  In my last post, I alluded to the productive and energizing student planning session we enjoyed in January, wherein twenty-plus of our terrific students envisioned Falmouth Academy in 2025.  The students impressed us not only with their aspirations for their school but also their understanding and appreciation for the strong position and institutional culture from which we will be pursuing such ambitions.  

That student voice was in many cases amplified in the Innovation and Strategy sessions we held over the weekend of February 7 and 8.  On Friday afternoon, the full faculty was joined by the Board of Trustees for three hours of imaginative thinking about the many possibilities available to our school.  We devoted the majority of this session to hearing from and engaging with an impressive panel of external experts: 

All shared their perspective on what schools can do to ensure that their students are future-ready, as well as their experiences with managing the many challenges that accompany organizational change. In addition to an extensive Q&A session, participants engaged in conversation at their tables, generating and sharing perspectives on the school’s strategic priorities.

The following day, a smaller group spent the better part of seven hours reflecting on that session as well as on the cumulative results of eight months of research, all neatly summarized and bound in a briefing booklet.   We engaged in a number of activities and exercises designed to move us toward consensus of three to five strategic ideas in service of which a series of measurable action steps could emerge. We still need to provide some definition and specificity, but the priorities that have emerged from our process will not surprise you.  Among them, further leveraging the many opportunities of our unique location, re-examining the curriculum to ensure that it is fully responsive to a changing world, making sure that FA continues to be accessible (and affordable) to a diverse and diversely talented student population, and attracting, retaining, developing, and fairly compensating a top-notch faculty.  

In the coming months, the Strategic Planning Committee will sharpen these priorities and begin to specify some of the action steps that the school can take to realize them.  Look for an update in April and thank you for your ongoing interest and engagement in what has to date been a terrific process.

Best, 
Matt