Dear Country School Community:
As we embark on a journey to write our school’s next chapter, we thank you for your partnership. Country School has always been and remains a very special school with a deep commitment to educating children in a way that cultivates curiosity, nurtures a sense of community, attends to all aspects of child development, and equips our students with the skills and dispositions they need to reach their full potential and lead lives of impact and purpose.
Through our strategic planning process, we seek to build upon the previous 103 years of excellence, while boldly charting a course for the next 5-10 years to keep the school pointed toward our mission of providing the very best education for children. Our process will include extensive internal and external exploration, taking into account the latest research in education and the impacts of our regional context. It will illuminate opportunities for us leverage new advances, to maximize our existing resources, and to best position the school to have the greatest impact on our students.
We have partnered with a national leader in educational strategic planning, Ian Symmonds Associates (ISA), for this project. Your input, through our parent survey last year, your many points of feedback, and your involvement, has played a big role in the process to this point. After hiring ISA, we appointed a steering committee of trustees, faculty, parents, alumni and school leadership to help oversee the process and present the plan to the Board of Trustees.
As we move forward, we will continue to engage the entire community as we align around our core values and begin to shape a plan for our future. Specifically, we will evaluate our research findings, identify core strategic initiatives, develop work groups for deeper exploration, articulate our shared goals and, finally, adopt and implement our plan, with an anticipated launch of Fall 2020. We will update the community regularly throughout the process. If you have a question or comment about the strategic plan, please email us at: stratplan@countryschool.net.
Sincerely,
| Aaron Cooper Head of School Co-Chair, Strategic Plan |
Sarah Irwin Vice President, Board of Trustees Co-Chair, Strategic Plan |
Steering Committee
Aaron Cooper P ’23, ’21, Head of School, Co-Chair
Sarah Irwin P ’25, ’25, Vice President, Board of Trustees, Co-Chair
Brooke Arthur P ’28, ’24, Director of Marketing and Communications
Jeannie Stanton Bean ’83, P ’17, ’15, ’14, Beginners 4/5 Teacher
Yolanda Coffield P ’21, ’18, Trustee
Tucker Golden ’90, P ’26, ’22, Trustee
Kathy Kravec P ’10, Director of Plus Program; Service Learning Co-Director
Heidi Locke Simon P ’27
Hannah Liu, Upper School World Language Teacher, Advisor
Meaghan Mallin P ’29, ’25, Head of Lower School
Beth O’Brien P ’25, Head of Early Childhood
Reshan Richards P ’29, ’26, Director of Studies
Lauren Romeo P ’24, ’21, Language Arts Department Co-Chair; Upper School Learning Resources Teacher
John Ryan P ’23, ’20, Trustee
Pam Safford, Director of Enrollment Management and Financial Aid
Timeline
Spring 2019
Ian Symmonds retained as consultant
Summer 2019
Steering Committee forms
Fall 2019
Research and data gathering
Focus groups
Winter 2019-2020
Work groups form for each strategic focus area
Spring 2020
Plan presented to Board of Trustees for adoption
Fall 2020
Strategic Plan launch
Fall 2020
Strategic Plan launch
