Strategic Vision Timeline

Draft our Approach 

• The Steering Committee drafted many versions of the strategic direction of the school, and boldly injected possibility into the traditional understanding of the strategic planning process. The BFS plan would not simply outline the next 5-10 years of the BFS story. Instead, the stories shared in the strategic planning process were held with reverence: our community is committed to a sustainable future which honors the Light within our community, and shines it brightly beyond the walls of BFS.

Narrow Our Focus

• SPT continues to analyze the findings from interviews and the community design day, honing in on the focus areas of the strategic plan. Diving deeply into components of our community: From our Quaker identity to teaching & learning, campus space to our Brooklyn community, the SPT became experts in the parts that make up the whole of the BFS experience, and imagined what is possible in the future. 

Community Design 

• BFS Community Design Day! BFS hosts a Community Design Day which opens the strategic planning process to members of the BFS community. More than 110 colleagues, former colleagues, parents, alumni, trustees, and greater community members join together for a full-day experience at BFS. Over eight hours, participants were able to dive into the future of BFS, learn about strategy and design thinking, and build prototypes of possible futures for Brooklyn Friends School.

Listen, Learn, Imagine

• BFS and the SPT host Think Tank experiences for colleagues and BFS parents. At these events, groups of parents and colleagues join Carla, Shu Shu and SPT members to share their hopes, dreams, and ideas for BFS’s future. Through design and future thinking exercises, a bastion of creative ideas are surfaced! 
• SPT interviews 90+ BFS community members including students, alumni, colleagues from all areas of the school, current and alumni parents, and members of the greater Brooklyn and Quaker communities. 
• Think Tank & Interviews are analyzed and distilled by SPT to identify priorities from the community. The data provides early thinking for the SPT’s areas of inquiry which will eventually evolve into the strategic plan. 

Begin & Explore

• Strategic planning process launches formally! 
• Carla Silver & Shu Shu Costa, of Leadership + Design, travel to Brooklyn Friends School to learn about our community. Through listening tours, interviews with colleagues, campus tours and more, Carla and Shu Shu build an understanding of the BFS story. 

• Firm Selection: BFS selects Leadership + Design as our stewards of the strategic planning process.
• Research & Learning: BFS leadership and Board of Trustees explores best practices for strategic planning, design thinking, and community preparation. 
• Strategic Planning Team (SPT) forms in spring 2022: a group of 20 BFS community members who commit to the 12 month process of building the vision for BFS’s future. 

• BFS Board of Trustees approves the beginning of a Strategic Planning Process to launch in Fall 2022.