In the spring of 2023, Chief of Staff Lauren Dickert and Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning Debby Previna contracted consulting firm Leadership+Design to create a five-year strategic plan for GDS. Dickert, Previna and the firm selected a group of faculty members, board members, alumni and parents to serve on what is known as the GDS Strategic Planning Committee. The committee will construct the school’s first five-year strategic plan since 2014.
According to Dickert, the 2024-2029 strategic plan will consist of roughly five focus areas the school will work on over the next five years. In the 2014 plan, focus areas included the One GDS Campaign (the unification of the LMS and high school on the same campus), goals to enhance curriculum as well as long-term financial sustainability. In this year’s strategic plan, interviews led by the committee and its consultants will determine focus areas.
Previna said that possible focus areas include how climate change will affect the future of GDS, how students can better approach civil discourse and financial accessibility to GDS.
“One thing about GDS that should be highlighted and focused on is socioeconomic status,” SSC President and senior Julian Montes-Sharp said. “I think there needs to be increased discussion of socioeconomics and how that affects the day-to-day life of students.”
“We spent a fair amount of time last year interviewing firms to support the strategic planning work,” Dickert said. “Leadership+Design emerged as a top firm through a referencing and interview process. They understood and had a lot of experience working in partnership with schools and developing strategic plans. Many of them were school leaders, so they understood what planning for a school looks like.”
According to their website, the California-based Leadership+Design team has worked with other D.C. schools, such as the Lab School, Washington Episcopal, St. Patrick’s and the Field School.
“Lauren [Dickert] and Debby [Previna], with our support, put together a really great group of community members,” Leadership+Design Executive Director Carla Silver said. “We started by talking about the process and then trained them to go out and do interviews, alongside us, with various members of GDS faculty and staff.”
High School history teacher Anthony Belber was one of the faculty members selected for the team. According to Belber, Head of School Russell Shaw sent an email in early September of 2023 asking faculty members if they were interested in joining the Strategic Planning Committee.
Silver and firm partner Antonio Viva conducted think tanks with faculty, staff and parents on Oct. 18 and 19, 2023. “We asked them about the future of the school, not the school today but the school ten years from now,” Silver said. Previna noted that the faculty and staff session was separate from the one held with parents.
Silver said that the turnout from faculty and staff was underwhelming at the first think tank. “That’s not unusual,” she said. “They’re busy people, so to ask them to come and do two hours with strange consultants is hard.” According to Dickert, approximately 50 parents attended their session of the think tanks.
In an email sent to GDS high school students, parents, faculty and staff on Nov. 30, 2023, Dickert announced a Community Design Day on Jan. 28, 2024, to be led by the committee. Dickert told the Bit that Leadership+Design consultants would plan the day. The email stated that the input from participants in the Community Design Day will be considered in the final plan.
According to the email, students will have the opportunity to meet with the committee and consultants, engage in workshops on the outlined focus areas and propose new ideas for the committee to review. Silver told the Bit that she hopes anywhere between 100 and 150 people attend the Design Day.
Junior Tyler Smallwood said he had not heard about the Design Day but thought the idea was interesting. “If they brought it up at a Monday Meeting or assembly, that would definitely be helpful,” he said.
“After that day, our team will start drafting the specific area and goal of the strategic plan,” Dickert said. Dickert and Previna estimated that the plan would be presented to the community by the fall of 2024.
Montes-Sharp said he hopes that students who contribute at the Community Design Day will be kept involved in the process. “I hope there is a follow-up with the students who gave their input,” he said. “I don’t think this should be a single-moment thing. There should definitely be some additional conversations after the day.”
Dickert told the Bit that a recent audit on GDS’ diversity, equity and inclusion and feedback from a third-party accreditation team during GDS’ recertification to operate would influence the plan.
“Long-term planning is an area where we generally lack student input,” Montes-Sharp said. “The SSC deals with more day-to-day stuff. This would be a really important thing to have student input on.”