• The format most districts should choose for strategic planning.
• You run the process, and we’re with you at the points where it’s hardest to run yourself: designing the input process so it surfaces something real, facilitating the sessions where a wide-open list becomes a short one, and pressure-testing the goals before they go to the board.
• Scheduled consulting calls at each phase, review and feedback on your work, and customization to your district’s context.
• Why we recommend this one here. In a planning process, someone has to hold the room without having a stake in the outcome. When that person is the superintendent or a cabinet member, staff moderate what they say and the board wonders whose plan this really is. Having an outside voice at the two or three moments that matter costs a fraction of a facilitated engagement and solves most of the problem.