Ninety Days to a New Strategic Plan
You are six weeks into your first year as superintendent of a 4,200-student district with eight schools. Six of the nine board members were elected eight months ago on a 'back to basics' platform and have publicly criticized the five-year strategic plan adopted three years ago after 14 community forums. Two of that plan's five goals have been met; the 'portrait of a graduate' goal has stalled. A staff climate survey shows 41% of employees trust district leadership, down 12 points from two years ago. Three principals have told you privately that initiative fatigue is real: the district has launched four new programs in three years and none is fully implemented. The board chair wants a completely new strategic plan approved in 90 days, and one member has asked you to drop the portrait of a graduate goal because 'it isn't academic.' Enrollment is projected to fall 6% over five years, and next year's budget already assumes flat state aid.
1. How do you respond to the chair's 90-day demand for a new strategic plan? Give your recommended sequence and defend it against the alternative of simply complying.
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Recommendation: amend rather than replace, and reframe the 90 days as a plan for the plan.
Reasoning against compliance:
- A 90-day replacement written by nine people under deadline reproduces exactly the conditions that made the current plan fragile. It becomes the fourth new initiative in three years and confirms the staff's fatigue narrative.
- The existing plan carries three years of community input. Discarding it forfeits your only existing claim to broad ownership and sets a precedent that plans turn over with each election.
- Complying also teaches the board that a deadline is a strategy.
Sequence:
- Weeks 1-3 - public audit. Which goals were met, which stalled, why. Publish it. This turns 'the plan' from a symbol into a data question.
- Weeks 3-8 - structured input. Four sessions plus a short translated survey on one question: what should the next three years prioritize? Put the board's back-to-basics priorities explicitly on the agenda so members see themselves in the process.
- Weeks 8-12 - a revised plan. Three goals, one measurable indicator each, a named owner each, and an explicit 'stop doing' list tied to the initiative inventory.
Say to the chair: 'You will have a board-adopted plan in 90 days. What you will not have is a document written in isolation, because that plan would fail the same way this one did.' Put that commitment in the board packet, in writing.
2. What is your approach to the trust and initiative-fatigue data, given that you have no new money and cannot remove existing mandates?
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Trust is rarely repaired by better communication. It is repaired by visible subtraction.
- Declare a 12-month moratorium on new district initiatives by board resolution, with exactly one exception: whatever the revised plan names. A moratorium is free and it is the single most legible signal you can send.
- Publish an initiative inventory - every program, its cost, its owner, its evidence. Bring the board a keep / fix / stop recommendation for each, and actually retire at least two, even if each has a constituency. Staff discount announcements and believe subtraction.
- Protect the principals' calendars. If walkthroughs and PLC time survive contact with central office requests, staff conclude the change is real. If they don't, nothing else you say lands.
- Close the loop on a schedule. Tell staff in September what you heard, and in May what changed because of it. Re-administer the same instrument at 12 months; 41% is a two-year problem, and saying so builds credibility.
- Name the mandates honestly. Where a state requirement cannot be removed, say so plainly rather than presenting it as a local choice. Staff can distinguish the two, and pretending is what erodes trust.
Avoid a listening tour with no decisions, a new culture committee, or a survey whose results are never published.
3. A board member asks you to delete the portrait of a graduate goal. How do you handle this both substantively and politically?
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Separate the substance from the politics.
Substance: the goal is a graduate profile - communication, collaboration, problem-solving, a capstone. It is not a curriculum adoption, it is inexpensive, and it is the piece of the plan most connected to local employers and to families. Before conceding or refusing, get specific about the objection. Is it the language, the indicators, or the association with the prior administration? Frequently it is the third, and the content can be retained under a different name - 'career and life readiness' - with stronger academic indicators attached.
Politics: you are one vote short of a majority and you are six weeks into the job. Do not spend capital defending a label. But do not let a single member edit a board-adopted plan by asking the superintendent, either - that precedent will be used again on something you care about more.
Route: bring the request to a public work session with the goal's indicators and the community input behind it, and let the board decide as a body. Offer the compromise explicitly - a rename plus tighter measures such as percent of eighth graders on track in algebra and percent completing a capstone. If the board votes to remove the goal, implement the decision cleanly and note your recommendation in the minutes, once. Re-litigating a settled vote is how a superintendent becomes a faction.