LANDON UPDATES MISSION AND CHARACTER PLEDGE

Over recent years, the Landon Board of Trustees has addressed the 2018 Strategic Plan’s call to review our various identity statements (such as mission and philosophy) and confirm that they were robust representations of Landon’s purpose and values. The Board completed that work last spring.

In 2018, as part of the Strategic Planning process, the Board began a review of the School’s current mission, philosophy, and character statements, concurrent with a similar process undertaken by the Administrative Team. The Board ultimately decided to assemble a taskforce comprised of trustees, administrators, faculty, and alumni in 2019 to formally begin the process of evaluating our identity statements.

This group – whose membership included trustees Scott Harris ’84, Steve Jones, and Bill Magruder ’92 as well as staff members Stevie Brown, Jen Dunfee, Charles Franklin, Addison Hunt, Jim Neill, Thomas Pipoli, Sarah Powers, and Ricky Sears ’99 –reviewed academic research on the role and importance of mission and philosophy statements, examined statements of other schools, and evaluated comprehensive survey data from the Landon community. All of this informed the group’s more focused efforts to consolidate, refine, and update Landon’s current identity statements in ways that expressed Landon’s reason for being as thoroughly and authentically as possible.

Drafts were reviewed and revised by faculty and staff and by the Board multiple times last school year. They were also shared with Upper School student leadership. All of this led to the taskforce presenting to the Board at the end of the school year three separate documents for their approval: an updated mission and philosophy statement; an updated Character Pledge that brings together our Honor Code, Civility Code, and Core Values; and a new Portrait of a Graduate statement. The Board approved all three unanimously at its final meeting last year.