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Looking to the future: Committees help
schools shape long-range plans

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
(Email Renee)

Now that the diocesan long-range plan for schools has been formed, this school year attention has turned to the development of local long-range plans.

Each school has formed committees that are now working to create a plan.

Rosalynd Koob, chair of the committee for long-range planning for Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, said she agreed to serve on the committee because she was interested and invested in the future of Catholic schools. This parent of Mater Dei students noted that this process has many benefits for schools.

For instance, she sees value in bringing together school administrators and officials with parish pastors, lay people and members of the Catholic school community “to talk about all of the good that happens in our school and talk about the future so that we can maintain it and come up with ways to further develop it where necessary.” She said planning is necessary to stay strong in the future.

Koob pointed out that they are currently drafting their long-range plan.

Maureen Lenz, principal at Pocahontas Catholic, said it is important for schools to have a vision and then take steps to work toward vision so that they improve every year.

As they gathered information to move ahead with long-range planning it gave them an opportunity to reflect upon what they do well and what they need to improve. Given that this is something all of the diocesan schools are participating in, she noted, serves as a motivator.

Mary Beth Andrews, chair of the committee for long-range planning at St. Mary’s School in Storm Lake, said the process was important “in order to meet the inevitable challenges our school will face, we will be better prepared to move forward strategically by having a firm foundation, strong and clear action plans and transparent accountability.” 

She pointed out that long-range planning is not new to St. Mary’s as a couple of teams had been in place for several months. These teams had started to build the framework by brain-storming the critical issues, identifying priorities and crafting action plans. 

Working together

“The difference with this new long-range plan is that we are working directly with our diocesan partners as well as using other regional Catholic schools as sounding boards and benchmarks. A strategic plan with problems/opportunities/issues, a timeline and responsible parties is a good way to ensure that we don't lose sight of what has been determined to be our critical issues, as well as how and when we are going to address and resolve the issues,” Andrews said. “Our people at St. Mary's have a long history of impassioned dedication. It's not by chance that our school is to celebrate 100 years this year. It's certainly by God's grace and the hard work of many that we are realizing this milestone.” 

For Lynn Miller, principal at Bishop Garrigan High School in Algona, he said that there is value in such a process as it “energizes us to look toward the future of the schools, gives of validity for what we are trying to do and it brings us together to identify key areas we need to address to make the school even stronger in the future.”

Miller said it has been beneficial that the long-range planning was done in a two-tiered approach with the diocesan plan and then local school plans.

“We are in it together and yet we also break into separate things,” he said.

The Garrigan principal said they have had a committee structure in place for many years, so they were in good shape when this process began. Some of the committees they already had in place were Catholic Identity Committee, School Improvement Committee and Development Committee. From membership on those and other committees, the Strategic Planning Committee was formed to develop the long-range plan.

Re-energized

“It basically re-energized us and gave us some new thoughts and direction,” said Miller, who added that from a local perspective it affirmed what they have been doing in many ways. “From the diocesan level, it is trying to look at critical issues for our Catholic schools.”

  And while the plan isn’t finished, Lenz has already seen fruits of the work thus far. She said that as a result of the plan, to strengthen Catholic identity they have decided to bring in Totus Tuus to the parish this summer.

“I am really pleased with the people that we have who have come on board to work on this process,” Lenz said. “You don’t realize how many gifted people you have until you start something like this.”

The diocese is encouraging all schools to present this initial plan at townhall meetings.

“When we do present it to the public, our goal is to get as much input from the public as possible because it should be a plan of everybody’s,” Koob said. Based on feedback from the public meetings, the plan will be updated.