Strategic Planning 2022
A school’s mission, objectives and core values are what guides a community to support all student learning. Our NIS mission is at the heart of who we are, reflected in our “Three i’s” - Inquire, Inspire and Impact - and something that permeates deep through our school culture. Since schools and communities change however, the mission also must be reviewed from time to time in order to remain relevant to the community that is served.
NIS first utilized the transformative power of developing and implementing a collective school mission through “Strategic Planning” in 1995, again in 2004 and 2009-2010, and then again, finally, in 2022.
Delayed by COVID, the current NIS community embarked on a Strategic Planning process to embed the plans and procedures necessary to be able to continue to adapt to serve both our students and our community.
Future Cafés
The process started in September, 2022 with “Future Cafés” - a series of meetings over several days and welcomed over 120 students, parents, staff, alumni, administrators and board members to weigh in on discussions about what kinds of issues will be important for the future NIS, and what will be needed to be able to meet the challenges ahead. In these meetings there was also discussion about the current school mission and whether or not any new considerations were needed. In addition, a survey was sent to the community for those who were interested in sharing thoughts that way. The full summary of the ideas and questions that came up is available HERE.
Staff and students then spent time in sessions reviewing both our current “Mission” and “Guiding Statements'' in order to prepare options for consideration to a “Core Team”.
The Core Team
The Core Team was tasked with formulating final drafts to present to the Board of Directors. After two days of discussions and deliberations, the newly revised mission and strategies were drafted and presented to the Board of Directors for approval. Both were approved in December, 2022.
We are grateful for everyone in the NIS community who made the time and effort to join in the discussions or share their thoughts, and look forward to the new plan guiding NIS into the future!