Introduction
This document presents the strategic plan for the Abington Public Schools. It establishes a long-range direction for the district and provides a clear focus for future pursuits by identifying priorities for improvement.
Strategic Planning is a process for creating an organization’s preferred future. It is a planning process for organizational renewal and transformation that provides a framework for improving programs, management functions, and evaluation of an organization’s progress. Strategic planning helps organizations think and act strategically, develop effective strategies, clarify future directions, establish priorities, improve organizational performance, build teamwork and expertise, and deal effectively with a rapidly changing environment. The strategic planning process involves a series of steps that moves an organization through:
- understanding relevant external trends and their implications;
- assessing organizational capacity to manage external change and improve;
- developing a mission, and guiding principles;
- establishing goals, objectives, and action plans designed to move the organization to where it wants to be;
- setting a strategic direction to follow to achieve its mission and goals;
- communicating its mission, guiding principles, and goals/objectives to all stakeholder groups;
- implementing the action plans it has developed; and
- monitoring progress, solving problems, and renewing action plans.
Organizations implement strategic planning to effectively deal with change in a proactive, rather than reactive, manner by establishing a common purpose, a sense of direction, priorities for change, and a blueprint for action. This plan presents an analysis of the Abington school district’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats anticipated by current trends and changing conditions. Based upon these understandings and analysis, this document defines the mission, guiding principles, and goals and objectives, which will guide the school district during the next three to five years.
This strategic plan is the culmination of analysis and work by a strategic planning committee consisting of teachers, administrators, parents, students, government leaders, school committee member, business representatives, and community leaders.