Strengthening the school & parent partnership
This past week the school held another round of grade-level coffees with parents, hosted by the head of school and the board’s strategy task force. The focus this year has been to diligently collect feedback from the parents, teachers, former students and extended community. This data will be carefully processed to develop ideas and an action plan for providing an educational environment that will nurture our students to be successful in today’s world. The school’s strategic framework has been a work in progress, evolving at each step along the way in a manner that could not possibly have been anticipated or planned in advance back in September.
The grade-level coffees over the last week were actually our third round of parent meetings. We held program-level coffees in early fall, a Golden Bean community-wide meeting in January, and finally another round of program-level coffees this past week. All of this was in addition to individual one-on-one parent meetings and a survey sent to the entire parent population.
The input from parents has led to important shaping of the school’s strategy plan and marketing work, and parents this week made a point of expressing their appreciation for being involved in this important process. The ideas that came up during the last round of parent coffees were substantive and will be a valuable part of the school’s strategy framework being presented to the board this spring. We will share the updated strategy framework with the entire parent community, in writing, before everyone leaves for the summer. Oak Meadow School seeks to be a leader in Montessori education in the 21st century. That lofty aspiration cannot possibly be achieved if our goals are not based on clearly-defined student outcomes that our parents understand and embrace.
I look forward to the continued parent partnership of honest perspective and feedback. As we look to the future, let’s keep working together to make this partnership even better.
