Orange Crescent School
Strategic Plan
OCS has embarked on a strategic planning process designed to help us understand what our community values about the OCS experience—how well we fulfill our mission and what assets we should focus on strengthening and evolving. We're undertaking this important process to inform the school’s near term priorities and ensure that our vision continues to be in alignment with our past while also reflecting the innovations of today and the promise of tomorrow.
We are now in the first year of the implementation phase, beginning to deliver on three fronts: Academic Excellence, School Culture, and Responsible Stewardship.
OCS' Strategic Plan Design Principles
OCS' strategic plan, accompanying initiatives, and metrics for success will meet the following design principals:
Islam. Love and respect for Islam is infused throughout the strategic plan.
Collective. The strategic plan prioritizes the well-being of the OCS community, drawing upon stakeholder voices to identify needs, priorities, and solutions.
Fairness. The strategic plan promotes consistency and equity so that students, staff, and families are treated fairly no matter who they are.
Sustainability. The strategic plan moves OCS toward long-term financial, policy, governance, and human capital sustainability.
Accountability. The Strategic Plan supports making sure the students and staff are held accountable for upholding school policies and their roles and responsibilities in helping OCS succeed.
Transparency. The strategic plan makes OCS' current state and progress transparent to the broader community.
Focus Area 1: Academic Excellence
Improve the academic experience of all students so that they are one grade level ahead.
Establish strong instructional leadership by prioritizing instruction at all levels of the school, implementing a cohesive and rigorous curriculum across all subjects, and attending to teacher development through after-school professional development and job-embedded coaching
Implement rigorous curricula across all subjects that align from grade to grade, encourages cross-curricular collaboration, and supports student engagement.
Implement a strong high school program that provides rigorous high school coursework and engaging options for electives, including college-credit courses, to prepare students for excellence in college or university.
Increase staff accountability for student growth and mastery by implementing consistent monitoring processes for staff policies and procedures and a yearlong staff evaluation system.
Recruit strong and diverse staff who are experts in their content area by revamping the hiring process, increasing compensation, and incentivizing certification.
Focus Area 2: School Culture
Strengthen our culture so that students, families, and staff feel safe, respected, connected, and proud to be at OCS.
Implement school policies and procedures consistently across spaces and individuals to ensure fairness and adherence to school expectations.
Improve student engagement and belonging by diversifying instructional strategies, revamping upper school scheduling, gathering regular student feedback, and restating values and character education.
Include parents in the OCS growth by dawning upon parents' skills and interests and working more closely with the PTO and ensuring monthly board meetings are open to parents.
Communicate with parents about students' academic progress through regular academic conferences rooted in student achievement data, classwork, and behavior.
Focus Ares 3:
Manage resources responsibly, transparently, and equitably to create a sustainable, 21st-century school that supports students' success.
Strengthen school governance by creating school board structures, including by-laws, self-evaluation tools, board meeting agenda templates, board report templates, and committee structures.
Provide expert support for the board by inviting participation from community expert advisors on school board committees.
Define roles and responsibilities for school leadership by creating a sustainable organizational chart and clearly delineating roles and responsibilities for OCS administrators, the OCS Board, the PTO and ISOC.
Maximize existing resources by revamping OCS' budget process, focusing on student retention from year to year, and making better use of existing facilities and technology, and creating efficient process and procedures for recurring routines and events.
Grow OCS' resources by increasing enrollment, diversifying OCS' revenue sources, and fundraising through a targeted development strategy.
Plan for long-term sustainability by documenting processes and procedures, identifying and coaching board members and school leaders of tomorrow, and planning for long-term facilities expansion.