Strategic Plan

Objective: Focus on learning results that consider the whole child (including social-emotional, intellectual, and physical wellbeing), defining success beyond what is reported on the academic transcript and college acceptance.

1. Embrace the use of data analytics to support robust understanding of student achievement and wellbeing.

2. Strengthen the connection between TAS curricular standards and classroom assessment, in order to facilitate the monitoring, analysis, and support of student progress.

3. Provide professional development to assist in the improvement of assessment standards and practices. 

Objective: Balance academics with preparation for life beyond TAS by preparing students to be good, purposeful, global citizens.

1. Define the skills progression for each of the Essential Capacities and devise strategies for their assessment.

2. Ensure students are capable of effectively learning outside of the traditional classroom, including through online learning.

Objective: Define and systematically develop students' information literacy and critical thinking skills, thereby teaching students how to learn, including how to engage in metacognition.

1. Identify and adopt KA-12 information literacy, critical thinking, and argumentation standards.

2. Hire additional librarians to support co-teaching and increase the number of technology and design coaches in the Middle School and Upper School.

3. Provide faculty with ongoing professional development to support the creation and implementation of information literacy standards and practices.

Objective: Ensure cross-divisional curricular alignment and collaboration among students and between faculty.

1. Continue to pursue implementation of the Curriculum Articulation and Alignment Roadmap, as adopted by the divisional principals and office of the deans.

2. Explore the development of professional learning communities (PLCs) across the School.

Objective: Provide students with opportunities for project-based learning and problem solving across the curriculum, finding more opportunities for service where appropriate.

1. Create opportunities for course prototyping, especially in the Middle School and Upper School, ensuring those prototypes are explicitly pilot programs of defined duration, with agreed-upon goals and measures of success, providing teachers with full-time equivalent (FTE) in addition to their current course load for developing and teaching those pilot courses.

2. Find ways to incorporate real-world problem solving into the curriculum with an eye towards working with local partners to implement solutions that are identified as part of those projects.

Objective: Appropriately break down subject area boundaries to allow students to make interdisciplinary connections and learn how disciplines work together to allow people to identify and solve complex problems.

1. Create pilot programs of defined duration, with agreed-upon goals and measures of success.

2. Provide teachers and administrators with professional development to support those efforts.

Objective: Embrace the appropriate amount of differentiation and personalized learning across the curriculum while continuing to ensure the use of student-centered pedagogy.

1. Support the use of data analytics to provide better understanding of student needs and increased personalization.

2. Support professional development regarding how to both effectively analyze data and appropriately personalize student learning.

3. Hire additional personnel for both cross-divisional coordination of academic support and student support services in the Upper School.

4. Facilitate the integration of language support for all students throughout the School.

Objective: Include anti-bias education that represents a broader range of diverse voices across the curriculum.

1. Evaluate the need for and, if necessary, hire an administrator focused on KA-12 Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI).

2. Promote professional development and parent education in this area, with a particular focus on promoting the readiness and ability of adults to have meaningful JEDI conversations that support the School's JEDI community commitment.

3. Review the curriculum to identify areas for increased inclusion, increasing the diversity of representation as necessary.

Objective: Incorporate elements of digital citizenship in the curriculum.

1. Support the professional development and acquisition of curricular resources necessary to incorporate those elements into the curriculum.

2. Consider increasing the number of technology and design coaches in the Middle and Upper Schools.

Objective: Provide students and faculty with opportunities for creativity and innovation, nurturing appropriate risk-taking.

1. Promote the use of standards-based assessment to promote student focus on academic growth rather than achievement.

2. Provide professional development and parent education in these areas.

Objective: Create an environment that supports students living a life of wellbeing and balance (including social, emotional, and physical wellbeing).

1. Promote wellness in a way that allows the School to investigate and implement programs that enhance wellness for all TAS students.

2. Further infuse social-emotional learning into homeroom and advisory lessons and reflect these values in all other areas of instruction.

3. Identify specific areas of consideration for implementation of social-emotional learning throughout the student experience, including by supporting and promoting the work of the School's student support services.

4. Review schedules, homework expectations, grading, and technology usage for students, providing appropriate levels of support and challenge to the full range of students at TAS.

5. Ensure healthy student transitions between divisions.

6. Assess the need for additional personnel in counseling schoolwide.

7. Support professional development to promote the appropriate provision of social-emotional support by teachers.

Objective: Teach students in ways that build resilience and confidence, allowing them to come to see failure and struggle as an essential part of learning.

1. Integrate this instruction throughout each student’s experience at school.

2. Provide parent education regarding the importance of this instruction and how it can be further supported at home.

Objective: Help students commit to a life of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

1. Host JEDI events, inviting and including local and regional schools, empowering students to take on leadership roles in this process.

2. Increase outreach to, and partnership with, local schools, including those with large indigenous populations.

3. Further infuse JEDI programming into homeroom and advisory, seeing the links to social-emotional learning.

4. Create further opportunities for students to lead on these issues.

Objective: Ensure students live the TAS values.

1. Provide parent education to ensure both their understanding of the importance of these efforts and their support of them at home.

2. Promote student ownership of our community values. 

Objective: Promote living a life of service as a global citizen among the student body.

1. Ensure the teaching and practice of empathy throughout each student’s experience at TAS.

2. Explore the addition of personnel to implement, coordinate, and supervise service programs across the School.

Objective: Recruit diverse, exemplary faculty who share our commitment to the TAS mission.

1. Identify and evaluate new recruiting tools and platforms, including but not limited to year-round recruiting, large scale virtual recruiting, regional/focus group virtual fairs, social media recruiting and other digital platforms that ensure we have access to a highly-qualified and diverse candidate pool.

2. Proactively recruit highly qualified candidates with diverse backgrounds.

Objective: Retain diverse, exemplary faculty and staff who share our commitment to the TAS mission.

1. Strengthen employee assistance programs for faculty and staff through the wellness program. Employee wellness initiatives will focus on professional, social, mental, and physical aspects of the employee’s experience at TAS.

2. Strengthen trust with employees through effective and timely communication, divisional and schoolwide team collaborations, and facilitate a culture that supports faculty and staff to achieve their professional goals that align with the School's mission.

Objective: Provide professional development according to the needs of the institution and to attract and retain excellent faculty and staff.

1. Identify and support mission- and program-critical professional development topics that are schoolwide as well as specific to each grade level, division, and department.

2. Encourage faculty to share their talents and skills at conferences and other venues.

3. Enhance TAS-specific essential training to prepare new hires before on-boarding.

4. Identify and support critical training that are TAS specific for after-school coaches and program volunteers.

5. Identify and support JEDI professional development for KA-12 faculty and staff.

Objective: Provide responsible financial oversight and stewardship, ensuring stability for the future.

1. Monitor and adjust long-range plans, which include those pertaining to land and facilities, finances, program, and endowment.

2. Increase awareness and knowledge among the Board, Administration, parents, and alumni of fundraising philosophy, programs and goals.

Objective: Develop and optimize facilities to ensure that the School provides safe, healthy, high-quality, sustainable, and instructionally appropriate learning environments.

1. Conduct a feasibility study to provide support for future facility decision-making processes.

2. Determine the optimal enrollment size on the current campus or increase the enrollment size, which would require investment in additional facilities.

3. Continue with current campus security projects.

Objective: Learn about, evaluate, and adjust as necessary the Board governance and processes to meet the continuing needs of the School.

1. Continue to monitor the effectiveness of the current board governance and take appropriate action as necessary.

2. Put structures in place to institutionalize the cultivation and orientation of new board members.

3. Continue to provide board governance-related professional development.

Objective: Create a more robust communication process to foster relations between the community and the Board.

1. Evaluate the effectiveness of the current communication process between the Board and the community.

2. Identify appropriate channels and methods of communication to ensure community understanding and awareness of the Board’s roles, responsibilities, and decisions.

Objective: Deepen the community’s understanding of and support for the School's commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

1. Effectively and consistently communicate the School’s commitment.

2. Integrate programming and resources, featuring experts in relevant fields, for parents and alumni.

Objective: Preserve bonds with TAS’s extended community through outreach to alumni, past parents, and other stakeholders.

1. Provide programs, services, and networking opportunities that meet the needs and interests of a diverse group of alumni, past parents, and other stakeholders.

2. Communicate with current students the benefits of the TAS network and what it means to be an engaged alumnus or alumna.

Objective: Meaningfully engage prospective members of the TAS community, to foster a shared sense of mission and to deepen understanding of the School’s values.

1.  Interview prospective families during the admissions process.

2.  Establish each family’s support for the School’s mission.

3.  Communicate with clarity and transparency regarding the School’s admissions process and overarching School's mission.

Objective: Evaluate the School’s communications to ensure they build community.

1. Streamline the School’s communication channels.

2. Increase staffing for content creation, editing, and communications alignment.

3. Reevaluate the School’s branding and, to the extent necessary, create new design concepts, website content, and materials to better communicate student and faculty accomplishments and reflect the School’s mission, values, and community.

4. Promote attendance at, and engagement with, parent events, both in person and online, in order to further build a culture that supports, and parenting practices that align with, the School’s mission and values.