Strategic Plan

Greensboro Day School Forward

Our Strategic Plan, Greensboro Day School Forward, provides a roadmap to guide our plans and priorities over the next few years. The strategic planning process included many voices in our community to help us imagine what our students will need to thrive in the years ahead. The resulting strategic goals were developed through meetings, surveys, and conversations with faculty, staff, parents, alumni, trustees, students, and many other school and community leaders.

Strategic Goals

Our People

Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni

Invest in our faculty and staff, reconnect with alumni parents, and ensure the safety and wellbeing of students.

Action Items

Research and develop a competitive compensation plan.
Utilize competitive compensation and strategic personnel procedures to attract and retain inspirational, diverse faculty.
Develop onboarding procedures for new faculty and students including mentorship, orientation, and ongoing support.
Develop annual orientation and feedback processes for faculty, staff and students.
Develop comprehensive safety programs and procedures that address social and emotional belonging, cultural diversity, and physical safety, including programmatic audits and assessments and revision cycles.
Restructure Advancement Office personnel to include a Director of Advancement and Database Manager.

Our Program

Program Excellence

Provide the highest quality and most innovative academic, art, and athletic programs in the Triad.

Action Items

Develop a plan for improving the school’s academic profile.
Dramatically expand experiential, traditional, and extracurricular learning opportunities, including coding, robotics, STEAM, and entrepreneurship, in order to serve current students and attract high achieving students from the area.
Align academic curriculum and the intentional use of standardized testing across all divisions.
Analyze the current use of time, both inside and outside of the school day, in order to improve our offerings and student health and engagement.
Analyze current participation in our arts and athletics programming and evaluate the offerings of sister schools with an eye toward increasing student participation and engagement.

Our Community

Public Purpose

Develop global citizens who connect to and serve the greater Greensboro community with purpose and distinction.

Action Items

Create a cross-divisional task force committee to take inventory of how GDS PK–12 current program/curriculum/service currently connects with the greater community (on and off campus) and gauge student interest.
Investigate service honors opportunities.
Develop and implement an aligned age 2–grade 12 public purpose framework that ties action with program and ties with arts and athletics. anchored by UN global problems including education about the giving cycle.
Explore process for hosting community field trips on GDS campus.
Establish public purpose coordinators in each division.
Explore summer community opportunities and adult education open to community.

Our Campus

Learning Spaces

Develop cutting-edge learning spaces designed to maximize student engagement.

Action Items

Take inventory of current technology available across the school and develop a plan to have developmentally appropriate and research-based fixed and flexible technology accessible to students and faculty.
Develop a plan to incorporate flexible classroom designs across the school. Include evaluation of labs, gyms, and other atypical learning spaces.
Develop a plan based on current research to adjust learning space ambiance with light, diverse student images, and wall color.
Develop a plan for gathering spaces and presentations in each division.
Update the campus master plan.
Evaluate leading edge outdoor play and learning spaces in order to develop a campus-wide plan for playgrounds, fields, and outdoor classrooms that engage student minds and bodies.
Explore the possibility of a campus focal point that has potential to establish tradition.

Our Future

Financial Strength

Build financial strength for the future and reduce reliance on tuition.

Action Items

Increase charitable giving in support of the operating budget to reduce reliance on tuition.
Develop a clear focused brand and communicate widely to create a long-range enrollment and retention strategy for increasing enrollment.
Explore real estate investment opportunities and new revenue streams.
Alleviate pressure on tuition through debt reduction.