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Dear Parents,

The Board of Trustees encourages each of you to share your thoughts in
the Strategic Planning process. If you would like to take part in
Strategic Planning discussions on Oct. 4 at the All-School Parents
Association meeting, you must RSVP to Lydia Adelfio,
adelfiol@sidwell.edu by Thursday, September 30. We hope to have a strong
showing of parents to engage with Trustees in a wide-ranging
conversation about the direction we wish to pursue as a school over the
coming decade and beyond.

We need to know you are coming so that we can divide everyone up into
roundtable groups. These small discussion groups, with Trustees and
designated recorders, will discuss the discuss possibilities, hopes,
needs, aspirations, and blue-sky ideas, all with some reference to the
"2024 Challenge", the set of queries that were developed last year to
help guide our conversation this year about our future.

A copy of these queries is found below, divided into focus areas that
will permit some division of labor in the further conversations growing
out of your roundtable discussions on Oct. 4.

I am sure your fall has been busy, and I do appreciate your willingness
to engage in this important conversation.

Sincerely,
Tom Farquhar


Sidwell Friends School
Strategic Planning 2010-2011
Strategic Planning Working Groups


A) Educational skill sets and preparation necessary for the year
2024, including technology, globalization, and environmental
sustainability;
* What skills and knowledge will be vital for SFS graduates in the
21st century, and which curricular reforms will be necessary to provide
for this?
* How will the rapid ongoing development of new technologies
impact learning; what, if any, educational benefits may be created for
our students as a result of these new capabilities; and how might the
adoption of new technologies in the learning process change SFS's cost
structure, facilities requirements, faculty and staff training, and
pedagogical expectations?
* How should the concept of the school day, the school week, and
the school year be defined for the year 2024? Should these definitions
differ by division of the School?
* How do we raise our student to see the world's
interconnectedness and thrive in a global economy, and how might this
change our current views of curriculum, school schedule, foreign study
and ravel, diversity of faculty, staff, and student body, and the role
of partnerships with other educational institutions internationally?
What opportunities are created by the fact that our school is located in
Washington, DC, and how do we take advantage of the resources of this
community?
* What must we do to impart to our students a rigorous
understanding of the ecology of the natural world, a sensitivity to the
impact of economic and development choices, and a personal realization
of how fragile the balance is between the health of the Earth and the
human race?

* What changes, if any, may be necessary to the School Philosophy
Statement to meet the 2024 Challenge?
* How should we as a community ensure that there is racial,
ethnic, religious, political, and socioeconomic diversity within our
community in the years ahead? Do our current admissions, financial aid,
and hiring policies appropriately support the School's educational
mission and resource needs?
* As a Quaker school, how do we prioritize among all these
objectives? How, in other words, do we want to define ourselves in 2024?

B) Expectations for faculty as master learners, and what we will
need to do to support our faculty institutionally;
* What should it mean to be a Sidwell teacher in a true learning
community? How do we ensure that members of our faculty are both "master
learners" and master teachers"?
* Which tools and techniques can be most effectively leveraged to
spur curricular and teaching innovation and support professional
development in our faculty? (Please consider venture grants, visiting
committees, evaluation and training methods, and online learning among
such approaches.)
* What principles and structure should guide the School's
Administration, Faculty, and Staff in ensuring that the School maintains
a strong system of accountability, for the physical, intellectual,
creative and artistic, and moral development of our students?

* What changes, if any, may be necessary to the School Philosophy
Statement to meet the 2024 Challenge?
* How should we as a community ensure that there is racial,
ethnic, religious, political, and socioeconomic diversity within our
community in the years ahead? Do our current admissions, financial aid,
and hiring policies appropriately support the School's educational
mission and resource needs?
* As a Quaker school, how do we prioritize among all these
objectives? How, in other words, do we want to define ourselves in 2024?

C) How our Quakerness defines our values, priorities and programs;
* What should "community service" mean for SFS? Which communities
should Sidwell Friends-and its families, faculty, staff and
alumni-emphasize in its approach to service, and how can this be best
accomplished?
* With the opening of the new Meeting House at the heart of the
Wisconsin Avenue campus next spring, how can we deepen our students'
spiritual experience at Sidwell Friends? Is this also an opportunity for
SFS as a Quaker school in the nation's capital, to advance the ideals of
the Religious Society of Friends? How might the new Meeting House be
used to "convene" a greater conversation within the wider world of
Friends education, and among those everywhere who are committed to
addressing injustices through the collective power of education?

* What changes, if any, may be necessary to the School Philosophy
Statement to meet the 2024 Challenge?
* How should we as a community ensure that there is racial,
ethnic, religious, political, and socioeconomic diversity within our
community in the years ahead? Do our current admissions, financial aid,
and hiring policies appropriately support the School's educational
mission and resource needs?
* As a Quaker school, how do we prioritize among all these
objectives? How, in other words, do we want to define ourselves in 2024?

D) Business model questions (and their interaction with educational
objectives).
* What is the right size (enrollment), shape (physical
facilities), and location(s) to carry out our mission in 2024, taking
into account the financial, political, cultural, and educational
ramifications of major change?
* How do we "afford" our ambitions as a School, and what does this
mean for our "business model" going forward? How sustainable is the
School's tuition-dependent economic model over the long-run? Are our
approaches to faculty compensation and student financial aid the right
ones? What financial steps must be taken to ensure that SFS can deliver
on the 2024 Challenge?

* What changes, if any, may be necessary to the School Philosophy
Statement to meet the 2024 Challenge?
* How should we as a community ensure that there is racial,
ethnic, religious, political, and socioeconomic diversity within our
community in the years ahead? Do our current admissions, financial aid,
and hiring policies appropriately support the School's educational
mission and resource needs?
* As a Quaker school, how do we prioritize among all these
objectives? How, in other words, do we want to define ourselves in 2024?