Strategic Vision - Friends School of Wilmington - Quaker School-8th Grade Independent School in Wilmington, NC

Strategic Vision - Friends School of Wilmington - Quaker School-8th Grade Independent School in Wilmington, NC
Strategic Vision
In line with a Quaker approach to decision making, or communal discernment, our strategic plan represents a collaborative living document articulated with tremendous care for each member of the FSW community.
Last completed by the Board of Trustees in 2023, it is a comprehensive and forward-thinking roadmap that outlines our institutional vision, goals, and strategies to guide development and growth. Through transparent, scaffolded dialogue, the following three strategic goals emerged: (1) facilities enhancement; (2) financial sustainability; and (3) ongoing commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging.
Goal 1: Facilities Enhancement
Goal 2: Financial Sustainability
Goal 3: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice & Belonging
Valuing simplicity, stewardship, and the environment compels us to cultivate facilities that respect nature and are designed for optimal learning within a context of safety and nurturance.
We believe our facilities should embody our approach to education and enable us to deliver robust curriculum while attracting and retaining a diverse and vibrant community. Improving our facilities, as evidence of our commitment to quality and sustainability, is critical to our development. Our action steps are to:
Construct a multipurpose building that can function as a gym/stage/gathering space for the school to enhance programmatic capacity and quality and permanent 5th-8th grade classrooms and enrichment classes, and additional tutoring/office space.
Continue to develop the Environmental Education Center to support programming within the school as well as external partnerships.
Develop and execute a plan 5815 Camilla Lane to support the financial health and diverse programming needs of the school.
Ensuring financial sustainability allows FSW to create and maintain a flourishing financial future for our school.
Our commitment to integrity and stewardship requires us to build capacity through: a fiscally sound approach to budgeting, responsibly growing the school, and continued investment in our teachers and staff while also expanding philanthropic resources. Our action steps are to:
Develop greater capacity to support capital campaigns and future fundraising efforts over the next three years.
Increase enrollment over the next three years, with a goal of 210 students by 2025.
Increase teacher and staff compensation over the next three years in an effort to attract and keep the best possible team for FSW.
Inclusion
: Deliberately include all voices in the community to ensure that each person is seen, heard, and acknowledged. Our action steps are to:
Encourage continual learning by offering community-wide DEIJB educational events.
Open up the Environmental Learning Center to members of the community and partner with relevant community groups and organizations to foster learning environments and find meaningful partnerships.
Work in partnership with indigenous groups to develop meaningful land acknowledgement and programming.
Equity
: Continue to affirm equity, with anti-racist and anti-bias training for our board, committees, faculty, staff, and school families. Incorporate what we learn across FSW to promote belonging in our ideas, language, and relationships, as well as in the policies, practices, procedures, and curriculum. Our action steps are to:
Continue to conduct Staff and Board training around DEIJB issues and open up educational opportunities to the community, when possible.
Communicate existing reporting mechanism / response process for families, students, and staff to report and respond to conflict and add DEIJB language that reflects the community's commitment to intercultural understanding and diversity.
Continue to evaluate FSW employee retention.
Diversity
: Embrace and increase diversity within our board, committees, faculty, staff, and students to reflect the demographics of the broader community in which we live. Our action steps are to:
Continue to develop and sustain affirmative recruitment, hiring, and retention processes to meet community-wide goals for culturally competent administrators, faculty, staff and families.
Develop recruitment strategy to include recruitment from HBCUs, community colleges, BIPOC-led community organizations with the goal of faculty and staff to reflect the city in which we serve.
Allow the Head of School and business office to allocate additional funds when necessary to recruit and compensate candidates from historically marginalized communities to meet the competitive market.
Justice
: The DEIJB Council is charged with taking positive action to hold ourselves accountable to promote fairness, so that all members of the community may experience belonging. Our action steps are to:
Revise FSW’s Diversity Mission Statement
Continue to grow the DEIJB Council, consisting of members from the FSW community and from the broader New Hanover County community, willing to listen and understand what constitutes racism, bias, and favoritism.
Create periodic feedback mechanisms for community members.