Hoping and Planning

Crescent’s administration, in partnership with our Board of Governors, undergoes strategic planning every few years (our last strategic plan covered the period from 2015 – 2020). This exercise provides an opportunity to contemplate our future and commit to ongoing school improvement. It serves as a road map for ways to strengthen our mission delivery and realize our vision.

The planning process started in Fall 2019, long before the coronavirus would wreak havoc on our world. It was a highly collaborative process, involving the Board of Governors, Crescent’s Executive Team, parents, students, faculty & staff, and alumni. We began by auditing Crescent’s existing culture and practices, to gauge current perceptions of our success across a variety of dimensions.

In the second stage, we held a series of what we called “Preferred Futures” workshops. These were organized in four pillars: Our Difference, Our Standing, Our Diversity and Our Campus. We brought together different teams to evaluate challenges and opportunities under each of these pillars. We were fortunate that the timing of the first two stages preceded the onset of the pandemic.

After the provincial shutdown last March, Crescent’s strategic planning committee continued to meet virtually for the third and final stage of the process. We used this time to consolidate our thinking around the most important needs for our boys and our school. The committee then recommended to the Board for approval four strategic priorities: Our Way, Our People, Our Campaign, and Our Future. Each area has specific tactics that will guide our work over the next few years. I encourage you to spend some time familiarizing yourself with our plans for the future. You can read the full plan, titled Fulfilling Our Promise: Strategic Priorities 2020-2024 here. 

 

In “normal” times, we would have unveiled our new strategic plan with quite a bit of hoopla. The logical venue would be our annual Town Hall meeting, traditionally held each September. But as we all have learned, sometimes the uncertainty of the present overrules tradition. We chose to defer the launch of our strategic priorities to focus attention on our safe return to school and the ongoing navigation of the pandemic’s impact on the Crescent experience. It has been a challenging year, but with resilience and collective effort, we are working through it.

I believe that we now are in a place to embrace our future with hope and optimism. Crescent’s plans for the coming four years are ambitious and exciting. They will make our academic offering more distinctive, enhance the performance of our people, expand our campus and our endowment, and fill our future with immense possibility. I am thrilled to announce this new strategy and very hopeful about the promise on the horizon.

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