Strategic Plan 2022

MARK DAY SCHOOL’S 2022 STRATEGIC PLAN DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE.

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE. We are not nouns; we are verbs. These three

verbs, drawn from the Mark Day School mission, guide every teacher as they work alongside each student, each day. At Mark Day, students learn the habits of mind and personhood that shape their lives and their learning from today forward; guided and challenged and supported by their teachers, they learn these crucial habits by doing: by pursuing their curiosity well below the surface, by learning to collaborate and partner with peers across the table and around the globe, by developing the mindsets and toolkits that enable them to work not just the intriguing problems of today, but the challenges that we cannot yet fully envision.

THE 2022 STRATEGIC PLAN DEFINES THE AREAS OF INQUIRY AND ACTION FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS. Student voice, agency, and challenge lead the way, and we will take steps to advance those central elements in work with every constituency: students, teachers, and parents and guardians. Deepening and expanding our integration of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice forms another pillar of our work, with a focus on cross-cultural collaboration and our local and global reciprocal partnerships. Shaping our structure and campus to meet the evolving landscape for independent education in the Bay Area will be a third area of concentration, with significant areas of inquiry to explore. Underpinning all these elements will be the effort to continue to build and nurture the team of faculty, staff, and administrators who lead this work with students, now and long into the future.

Transform student learning

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE.

Nurture and advance our faculty and staff

Advance DEIJ and partnerships

Shape our structure and campus

Our mission holds two more descriptors that we hold dear as a school: innovative and full of heart. We strive to build on these strengths, all in service of challenging and supporting young people to chart their own paths through their learning and their careers, to collaborate and partner with others across differences because they understand and seek the joy and strength of diversity, to challenge themselves, to serve and support others, and to find meaning in and relish not nouns, but verbs--in the good work they do each day, and the people they do it with.

Transform student learning

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE.

TRANSFORM STUDENT LEARNING Nurture habits and mindsets that students need to be agents of their own learning. Advance everyday use of assessment data to challenge every student and improve teaching practices.

WHY? WHY NOW? At Mark Day School teachers work alongside students to help them discover who they are, the passions that drive them, and the myriad possibilities that exist for them as learners. We know that from a very young age, students are curious and capable of building skills that enable them to pursue their learning with increasing depth, nuance, and perspective. At the same time as the world grows ever more complex and volatile, advances in technology and unprecedented access to information continue to rapidly expand the world open to our students. Those changes only accentuate the importance of students’ building the capability to navigate their own paths. The value of the skills and agency that students develop as durable habits at Mark Day School has never been more important for the world they occupy now and the ways that they will pursue their learning and their professions in the future. Mark Day was founded to challenge students; we will continue to shape that challenge to serve students in pursuing and applying their own learning in a world marked by complexity, volatility, and change.

ACTION STEPS 1

Provide more opportunities for student voice, choice, and agency. Pilot structures, including an 8th grade capstone project, that make each student’s learning path more self-directed and offer myriad ways for students to develop metacognitive and cross-disciplinary skills.

2

Adopt mastery- and standards-based practices to improve student learning across a broad range of skills and competencies. Pilot and select assessment tools that enable students to see and reflect on their own growth, areas of strength, and areas for development.

3

Advance everyday use of data to inform student learning and teacher decisions about curriculum.

4

Align the K-8 program and schedule to systematically embed Cross-Cultural Literacy and Ecological Literacy alongside Media and Information Literacy and Social and Emotional Literacy.

5

Structure faculty professional development, including intentional scheduling and practices to enable high quality collaboration and consultation, to achieve these goals.

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE.

Nurture & advance our faculty & staff

NURTURE & ADVANCE OUR FACULTY & STAFF

WHY? WHY NOW? The strength of Mark Day School has long been grounded in people and program, with teachers, administrative leaders, and staff taking the lead role in bringing the mission to life. We must continue to attract, develop, and retain outstanding people. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends already present, including the demands on faculty, staff, and administrators and pressure on schools’ ability to support teachers for the long-term and nurture the capacity for collaboration and professional growth, two higher-order factors in outstanding schools. We continue to see a significant increase in the cost of living in Marin County and surrounding areas, another crucial factor for all educators.

ACTION STEPS 1

Nurture community building through engaging and meaningful professional collaboration and growth.

2

Develop and deploy teacher innovation grants for teachers to pursue meaningful projects that both advance their own growth/practice and improve student learning.

3

Explore and pilot a regular teacher exchange with our partner schools and organizations.

4

Permanently endow Summer Institutes as part of community building and advancing professional best practices, mastery assessment, integration of DEIJ and cross-disciplinary literacies, and new programmatic ideas for all.

5

Permanently endow additional funding for competitive faculty/staff compensation and benefits while putting downward pressure on tuition increase.

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE.

Advance DEIJ & partnerships

ADVANCE DEIJ & DEEPEN & EXPAND RECIPROCAL PARTNERSHIPS

WHY? WHY NOW? Research and our experience make it clear: diversity, equity, and inclusion are prerequisites for excellence. Diverse groups that make space for all members to contribute are more innovative, show improved problem solving capabilities, and perform measurably better on complex and creative tasks. Many families choose Mark Day because of our diversity and inclusion, and DEIJ benefits every member of this community. At the same time, COVID and other societal and geopolitical forces have had negative impacts on collaboration and connection within and across communities. As always and especially in this context, strengthening bridges between our communities is crucial. We must educate students to have the skills and mindset to collaborate across cultural differences, and to create and strengthen reciprocal partnerships with others like and unlike themselves.

ACTION STEPS 1

Reflect the evolving racial and ethnic diversity of Marin County: We strive to double our LatinX student population to 11% while continuing to strive to match the overall racial and ethnic diversity of Marin County.

2

Seek major gifts and endowment contributions to support our continued efforts to reflect the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of Marin County.

3

Integrate reciprocal partnership across the K-8 program in sustainable, structurally supported systems. Develop ways to increase options for students to expand and deepen engagement with partner organizations as part of their self-directed learning paths. Fund expanded access to global partner exchange.

4

Permanently endow an educator in residence, with a focus on having an educator from a partner school/organization present on campus for an extended period every year.

5

Permanently endow the teacher intern program to attract people of color to the education field and to Mark Day School, spread the impact of the most recent research and practice from education programs, and increase reflection on best practices among all faculty.

6

Develop and extend the hiring pool to reach strong candidates of color as part of every search, and increase faculty/staff training on research-backed inclusive hiring and orientation practices. Track and regularly review data on the hiring “funnel” from initial candidate pool to hired individual.

DISCOVER. NURTURE. CHALLENGE. Shape our structure & campus

SHAPE OUR STRUCTURE & CAMPUS

WHY? WHY NOW? Economic and demographic realities in Marin and the broader Bay Area reinforce the need to be flexible in an era marked by flux and ambiguity. We must stay in an adaptable posture and make considered investments of time, analysis, and money to be ready to evolve with the market. Demand for the skills and mindsets that we develop at Mark Day School should be only higher in this context, and we consistently must be attuned to continuing to develop, shape, and communicate effectively about the Mark Day program and student outcomes. We will need to be nimble and adaptable to invest in the people, program, and campus (physical and perhaps digital) to deliver on the Mark Day mission.

ACTION STEPS 1

Launch a task force to develop alternatives for our current K-8 model, including the possibility of adding grades/levels on either end of the K-8 structure.

2

Explore mini-campuses in Marin (e.g., the Canal district, Southern Marin) to increase our engagement with our local communities and advance educational equity.

3

Identify further measures to address the open campus and related security vulnerabilities.

4

Extend the lease beyond 2045 and explore raising the enrollment cap. Develop plans to bring food preparation capabilities onto the campus, remodel older buildings, and improve the athletic field.

5

Pilot a multi-constituency environmental sustainability working group to explore and improve campus resource use and thoroughly integrate ecological literacy into the curriculum.

DEVELOPING THE 2022 STRATEGIC PLAN Mark Day School’s Strategic Planning Committee took a design thinking approach to developing our strategic vision for the upcoming years. The SPC itself was constructed

to include trustee, administrative team, faculty, and parent/guardian membership. One of the goals for the SPC as articulated by the Board was to “develop and implement a strategic plan process that reaches all school constituencies, including considerations of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other socially significant differences.” The process included the following elements: Fully dedicating the annual Board and Administrative Team retreat to strategic planning in October 2021 Researching and discussing trends in education, industry, and society; reading and exploring futurist thinking to design toward a probable and desirable set of outcomes; engaging in competitive analysis; and context mapping Hosting two parent/guardian Think Tanks and a full faculty/staff Think Tank in November 2021 Interviewing more than 50 parents/guardians, alums, faculty/staff, and students, including families for whom English is not the primary language spoken at home Hosting a parent/guardian Strategic Planning Salon in March 2022 Integrating feedback from the CAIS Accreditation Self-Study process and Visiting Committee Report in the plan, and Working together as the Strategic Planning Committee in a series of four-hour sessions throughout the school year.

Our facilitator has been Carla Silver, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Leadership + Design. Committee Members include Andrew Kawahara, Chair, Julian Allen, Silvia Buckley, Prathap Dendi, Ethan Dornhelm, Scott Faber, Aimee Foreman, Alexander Fraser, Rika Gopinath, Robert Hee, Dave Hickman, Wendy Levine, Chris Mazzola, Bonnie Nishihara, Fernanda Pernambuco, Thad Reichley, David Shapiro, and Joe Harvey.