Thomas Jefferson School
2014-2019 Draft Strategic Plan
Overview
INTRODUCTION
The work of drafting TJ’s next strategic plan unfolded
over a two-year period of intense reflection about
internal factors and candid discussion of external ones.
Early on, the Strategic Planning Committee, which is a
standing committee of the Board of Trustees, identified
key focus areas to guide the planning process:
Governance, Financials, Physical Plant, Advancement
(Admissions and Development), and Human Resources.
Sub-committees consisting of and/or having access to
our stakeholder communities (board, faculty,
administration, staff, parents, students, alumni, and
friends of the school) were then tasked with developing
goals in each focus area.
The goals that follow were drafted and consolidated for
review by the members of all other standing Board
committees (Advancement, Board Membership,
Buildings and Grounds, Evaluation, Executive, Finance)
and eventual consideration by the full Board of Trustees.
STRATEGIC THEMES
The strategic goals are specific and actionable, and will
be used to set priorities for utilizing the school’s
resources. They are clearly articulated and grouped by
the three themes that the Board of Trustees feels most
appropriately encapsulate the school’s long-term
priorities. The three over-arching themes are:
Excellence
Diversification
Sustainability
The Strategic Planning Committee invites
the TJ community to comment on the draft plan.
Theme #1: Excellence
Theme #2: Diversification
TJ will continue to challenge itself by striving for
excellence in order to remain worthy of the talent that the
school recruits, develops, and sends into the world.
TJ will diversify its resource base in order to ensure that it
continually delivers on the mission while minimizing the
amount of risk to the school’s future.
Excellence implies achieving the best possible outcome with the
resources available. At TJ, this means building and maintaining
a community that gives its students the strongest possible
academic background in order that they become contributors to
and citizens of the world.
Diversification is a process of varying the sources and types of
resources upon which success depends in order to avoid an
overreliance on any one type of resource. At TJ, this means a focus
on diversifying the recruitment, community, physical, and
financial resources on which the school depends. In doing so, the
school further supports its goal of sustainability by minimizing the
risks associated with its ongoing operation.
Students
TJ will continue to fulfill the mission of the school and
ensure that students are surrounded by the resources and
community that they need to fulfill their potential. TJ will:
•
balance the academic, extracurricular, and societal
elements of the community necessary to ensure a wellrounded student experience.
Faculty and Staff
TJ will commit resources to ensuring that the school’s
faculty and staff – those directly responsible for ensuring
students’ success – are supported in their endeavor to
achieve excellence. TJ will:
•
expressly define professional excellence for faculty
and staff, using the mission as a guiding statement;
•
commit financial resources to fund professional
growth and development through an articulated
training program with an emphasis on pedagogical
and other uses of technology;
•
develop a program to build a sense of engagement
and collegiality throughout the employee community.
Governance and Administration
TJ will continue to professionalize its business practices
while ensuring effective governance processes. TJ will:
•
build and maintain a Board of Trustees that brings an
enhanced range of useful skill sets to school
governance while balancing appropriate perspective
from school constituencies;
•
evolve board committees to a long-term, goal-setting
mindset in order to enable a more deliberative role for
the board.
Recruitment
TJ will diversify the participants in and results of the
recruitment process. TJ will:
•
actively diversify the TJ student population and
pipeline by building relationships with previously
untapped or underutilized international and regional
markets;
•
more deeply engage various internal and external
constituency groups in the student recruitment and
retention process through increased education and
outreach.
Community
TJ will increase its visibility and extend its reach to a broader
group of external constituencies: regional, domestic, and
international. TJ will:
•
seek out and develop mission-appropriate partnerships
and collaborations in a variety of public and private
sectors.
Physical
TJ will diversify the ways in which it uses physical assets to
facilitate community growth and school sustainability. TJ
will:
•
utilize its facilities towards a dual mandate of
community outreach and revenue enhancement.
Financial
TJ will continue to diversify its sources and uses of revenue
in order to ensure the future sustainability of the school. TJ
will:
•
diversify its sources of financial support with a focus on
building the endowment and funding specific
initiatives;
•
purposefully commit funds to those uses that drive a
sustainable community, especially the use of
technology, faculty development, and the physical
plant.
Mission Statement
Thomas Jefferson School gives its students the strongest possible academic background through a
classical education. Within a nurturing community, students develop a responsibility for their own
learning and a desire to lift up the world with beauty and intellect.
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Theme #3: Sustainability
TJ will build a sustainable school that meets the needs of
the community today and anticipates the needs of the
community tomorrow while preserving the cultural
elements that make TJ unique.
Sustainability is the usage of resources that ensures productivity
into perpetuity. At TJ, this means a focus on enabling the school
to continually meet its mission. As the education community
evolves in the twenty-first century, TJ too must embrace new
ways of delivering on the mission.
Demographic
TJ will strengthen the school and its community by
balancing the size of enrollment with that intangible sense
of community that brings together all those who care about
the school. TJ will:
•
increase its enrollment to equal or exceed one hundred
mission-appropriate students;
•
build a stronger sense of community among the
school’s various constituency groups, including board,
faculty, administration, staff, parents, students, alumni,
and friends of the school.
Physical
TJ will enhance its physical plant in order to better support
the needs of its current community and to enable and
facilitate enrollment growth and community strength. TJ
will:
•
complete a comprehensive campus master plan by
identifying and prioritizing the facility improvements
necessary to deliver on its mission as well as to
improve its standing within the local St. Louis and
broader independent and boarding school
communities;
•
embrace technology as a tool to enable the mission of
the school and prioritize its usage in pedagogical,
administrative, and living spaces.
Human Resources
TJ will deliver on the mission by ensuring that the staffing
needs of the community are met. TJ will:
•
further formalize its advancement team by creating a
full-time role for an advancement professional focused
on admissions, marketing, and communications;
•
examine faculty load and assess the compensation
system, including a focus on compensation for non
teaching responsibilities;
•
redesign the residence life program by pursuing an
appropriate staffing model and developing a new,
comprehensive residence life program;
•
seek cost-effective outsourcing options in additional
service areas.
Financial
TJ will continue to build financial resources in order to
achieve its long-term goals. TJ will:
•
develop a long-range advancement plan that maintains
the school’s vibrancy and provides new opportunities
for growth;
•
create and execute customized education plans that
best engage each constituency group in supporting the
school financially.
CONCLUSION
TJ’s strategic plan will provide long-term guidance
and direction. The individual, specific goals that
fall under the theme areas represent identified
needs. Collectively, they focus the community on
areas of long-term importance. Brought together
as a cohesive plan, they represent a critical tool that
will help TJ achieve its mission.
The goals that have been developed under each of
the theme areas are currently being circulated
within a variety of stakeholder networks for
additional feedback. At the conclusion of the
stakeholder review, the final plan will be
published, distributed, and available to anyone
interested in TJ’s future.
In addition to establishing concrete goals, the
Strategic Planning Committee is also charged with
building a process for actively managing and
accounting for all the steps along the way and for
supporting an ongoing dialogue as the school
works to achieve its objectives. There is a role for
every member of the TJ community to play in this
process.
If you’d like to comment on this draft plan, please
contact us at:
[email protected]
or write to us at:
Strategic Planning Committee
4100 S. Lindbergh Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63127
Thank you for your interest in TJ!