Points of Pride: Strategic Plan 2030: Year One (of Five)

Drawing on multiple community open forums, extensive Board input and a year of work by our Strategic Planning Committee, we launched Fort Worth Country Day’s Strategic Plan 2030 in April of 2025. Since I joined FWCD in 2015, this is the second strategic plan the Board has charged me with advancing. I am a fan of the strategic planning process and follow-up: I appreciate the community input and the clear Board directives.

A change I am pleased to have made for this second plan is the work we have done with a group of former Heads of School (and others) who call themselves Mission & Data. Knowing that Heads need to ground their strategic plan reports to their Boards in data, M&D developed its own process and template for generating and updating that data. Accordingly, my Head of School Reports to the Board this year all include updates on the progress of 16 specific goals that apply to the plan’s four Pillars. 

While the buck stops with me for overall implementation of SP2030, the work on those 16 goals is in the hands of the Senior Leadership Team. Each has two to four goals they are responsible for advancing. Some of those goals will not see progress for a couple of years. Many have seen progress already this year. 

We began the process with each of those leadership team members writing a sentence that began, “This year I plan to ….” Here are a few cherry-picked initiatives from the team’s beginning-of-the-year commitments:

From Pillar I (Commitment to the 3A’s): We are currently hiring a third Band and Orchestra Teacher. Andi Aguayo, orchestra, and Leni Settle, band and drumline, have spent the last two years trying to make it work, serving as both Middle School and Upper School Teachers. Given the differences in Middle and Upper School schedules, even Ms. Aguayo’s and Ms. Settle’s heroic efforts have not been enough. Given our charge to prioritize excellence in all three A’s, I am excited for those two wonderful arts educators to be returning to the model in which they have a partner and teammate for the Upper School band and orchestra. 

From Pillar II (College and Beyond): Peggy Wakeland H’25, Former Assistant Head and Head of Upper School, continues her travels around the country to visit our current undergraduate alumni at their colleges and universities. She has made it to 34 campuses so far, from Connecticut to Mississippi to Oklahoma. Ms. Wakeland’s initiative is about sustaining the School’s connection with our youngest alumni, in hopes that FWCD can be a resource for them during and after their college years. 

From Pillar III (Everybody Belongs): Mostly the purview of Nicole Masole-Rose, our Director of Community Engagement and Inclusion, Pillar III work to highlight so far this school year might be the relationships some Upper School students have established with students at Rivertree Academy. Our own students, led by a group that designed a reading intervention program last school year, are involved in reading to the youngest Pre-K and K students at the Como neighborhood school. They have developed a common sense of belonging to and through this wonderful cause. 

From Pillar IV (Student, Faculty and Staff Health and Well-Being): The biggest single target of our year one (of five) efforts on Strategic Plan 2030, Pillar IV is supported by our work on some health and well-being surveys. It was at the heart of some of our Professional Learning Community meeting groups that reported out in January. I think our faculty and staff would say that our Campus Spirit Fridays (e.g., jeans and an FWCD shirt) have been the most impactful. I don’t know what it is about jeans, or whether our faculty and staff even wear them beyond FWCD staff and faculty dress-down days, but they are seriously impacted by that gift of a jeans day!