STRATEGIC PLAN 2018-2023
OPEN TO THE WORLD In 2017, La Scuola reached an important milestone: the culmination of its first strategic plan which was written in 2012 when the decision was made to expand the highly successful preschool program into a K - 8 school combining Italian immersion and Reggio Emilia pedagogy that has now become the first elementary school in San Francisco to offer the International BaccalaureatePrimary Years Program. As we reflect on the last eight years there is much to celebrate. Our community has grown from 60 students to over 300 students. Our team has grown from 15 to 72 and our campuses have grown to two and have been enlarged to accommodate our growing family. These milestones energize us to build the bright future for our school community outlined in this Strategic Plan. In 2012, we set out to offer a very unique program of study that would enrich the heart, mind and soul of each La Scuola student and family. Our mission to inspire brave learners to shape the world instills a lifelong love of learning in the hearts and minds of each child. We believe that the Reggio Emilia pedagogy and its emphasis on creativity, inquiry and exploration is the foundation from which our student body thrives through 8th grade. After all, humans should keep that willingness to learn, play, create and wonder forever. We also believe that the trans- and interdisciplinary nature of the IB approach to learning, through a constructivist approach, is most prescient in today’s rapidly changing world, where we are all asked to think multidimensionally and across subjects, time and place. The need for this method of education is more critical today than ever and is being recognized by top universities as new challenges emerge requiring students to easily connect across disciplines. La Scuola students are very well prepared for this new world. And, we believe in the enormous power of language and how being bilingual (or multilingual) offers one the ability to transcend their everyday life and develop an understanding of other cultures and places. In short- our program is aimed at educating the whole person - academically, creatively, cognitively, socio-emotionally and physically.
Since In 2012, our goal was to expand the preschool into San Francisco’s first IB-PYP, preschool-8th grade school. We accomplished this and also became the only IB World school to offer this combination of language, pedagogy and curriculum in the entire network of over 5,000 schools worldwide. Our program is poised for accreditation by Western Association of Schools and Colleges, California Association of Independent Schools and Council of International Schools in 2018. We are under consideration as an Italian school abroad, a Scuola Parificata, by the Italian government and will candidate ourselves to offer the IB-Middle Years Program (IB-MYP) once again making La Scuola a groundbreaker among SF’s Independent Schools. Suffice to say that we met our goal to provide academic excellence. We continually reflect on how our program is being implemented and how our students are learning to better understand how to improve and best support every child. Our physical space has been transformed often and very creatively to accommodate the needs of our students and faculty while still retaining the spirit of the ‘environment as the third teacher’. The inaugural class will graduate in June of 2020 and La Scuola is now poised to find a permanent home, where we may continue to grow to full enrollment and provide its growing kids, faculty and classes with the assorted spaces and tools that they require. In addition to physical space, we are keenly aware of the challenges that living in the Bay Area poses for our families and our faculty. For this reason, we will also focus on understanding how we can continue to attract and retain top talent and how we can support our families. Our community has been incredibly generous and unanimously supportive of our goals. We have always funded exceptional professional development for our faculty, strived to offer competitive salaries and benefits and consistently increase our ability to help families access a La Scuola education. We hope to continue to nurture a culture of philanthropy that will allow La Scuola to continue to meet its goals and realize its dreams for years to come. Our unique program of study is informed by a pedagogical blend of Reggio Emilia, the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program and language immersion. The goal is to educate our children to be creative, collaborative, open-minded individuals who embrace life’s challenges and are committed to making a better world. This plan sets goals for our people, places and programs to continue to grow and thrive for generations to come.
OUR MISSION Inspire Brave Learners to Shape the Future OUR BELIEF
The world has changed and it’s time for education to catch up. That’s why, every day, it’s the students at La Scuola who ask the provocative questions...they lead— and embrace—their own ability to learn across the lines of subject, culture, and language. Because when children are open to the world and protagonists in their own education, there’s no limit to their ability to learn, find beauty in life, and discover extraordinary answers.
OUR VALUES
Children form and test hypotheses while interacting socially and academically with their peers, teachers and parents to make sense of the world around them. Children are innately imaginative, innovative, creative, critical thinkers and problem solvers. To succeed in an increasingly global, competitive world they must know how to learn, to think, to cooperate and to adapt. Learning in two languages develops cognitive advantages in literacy and quantitative skills while nurturing multicultural sensitivity. Children are individuals who should be nurtured physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially.
In 2016, La Scuola worked with Ratcliff Architects to conduct a feasibility study of its facilities to determine the space that would be needed to support a fully enrolled K-8 elementary school. La Scuola’s Board Facilities Committee convened the architecture team as soon as the ink was dry. La Scuola partnered with ZPZ Architects, based in Modena, Italy, and Pfau Long, an awardwinning firm based in San Francisco. ZPZ Architects are world-renowned specialists in Reggio spaces while Pfau Long has a deep understanding of our local market having designed many schools in the Bay Area. La Scuola has worked with ZPZ Architects for more than 10 years, most notably on the design and construction of the Dogpatch campus in 2010. Both firms share a commitment to La Scuola’s vision of beautiful and practical design and environmentally-sensitive architecture.
The design phase, as all prior ones at La Scuola, was a dynamic and inclusive process led by our community. The outcome is a 45,000-square foot environment in which our children experience the fullness of the Reggio Emilia approach with vibrant spaces that truly become the third teacher. We believe that space will inspire curiosity, creativity, joy and exploration and is most conducive to learning, and more importantly, to foster a love of lifelong learning. As our student population grows in size and age, so do the demands on our physical plants, making the need to find a facility that can accommodate the changing needs of our K-8 students short and long term, a key strategic imperative. This, of course, is no small task in San Francisco. Our preschool campus lease was extended in 2013 and will remain in effect through August 2038.
INITIATIVES Identify a permanent site for our K-8 campus. Create a master facilities plan for our K-8 and early education campuses that supports and enhances the student and faculty experience today and into the future. Finance the renovation and/or building of a new campus
At La Scuola, one of our highest priorities is to attract and retain talented faculty and staff who are passionate about learning, aligned with the school's values, and deeply motivated by the school's unique curriculum. La Scuola’s faculty are extraordinary changemakers with unparalleled optimism and determination to bring their varied knowledge and experiences to our school to shape our program to be among the best SF Independent Schools. La Scuola demands high integrity and skill from its team. Attracting talent can be challenging due to the language and pedagogical proficiency that is required as well as the high cost of living in the Bay Area. This requires creating a positive and dynamic working environment with plentiful opportunities for professional development and growth, as
well as competitive compensation and benefits packages that keep pace with a rapidly changing San Francisco. From our inception, La Scuola has committed to providing top-notch professional development and a competitive wage that allows our passionate educators to do what they love in our city. Several of our faculty have benefited from La Scuola’s close partnership with Reggio Children by honing their skills in Reggio Emilia, Italy. They use these experiences to serve as educators to their peers as part of the Innovative Teacher Project. La Scuola hosts educators from all over the world to audit our classrooms and learn about our unique implementation of pedagogy. La Scuola continues to identify sustainable ways to invest in its educators, believing wholeheartedly that doing so enriches our children’s lives socially and academically.
INITIATIVES Benchmark programs among Independent and Public Schools in the Bay Area to attract and retain top talent with desirable work/life benefits and compensation packages. Continue to invest in Professional Development with Reggio Children and other generative programs Establish La Scuola’s leadership in the Reggio Emilia pedagogy in the United States and identify opportunities for our faculty to be leaders in training their peers Establish a faculty-led task force to identify ways to support faculty
In 2012, La Scuola set out to expand its successful Italian immersion, Reggio-Emilia inspired preschool program into a K8 that would integrate the International Baccalaureate Framework into its curriculum. The mission of the IB is to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. The richly creative and play-based aspects of Reggio, the cultural richness and cognitive benefit imparted by the Italian language and the critical thinking and approaches to learning of the IB perfectly blend to nurture the heart,
the soul, and the mind. While the transdisciplinary curriculum in the primary years engages children by teaching them to work across and within disciplines - a skill that is ever more critical in our rapidly changing world, the MYP- Middle Years Program begins to prepare students for high school and beyond. In 2015, La Scuola successfully became the first IB-PYP school in San Francisco in 2015. As La Scuola embarks on its IB-MYP candidacy our efforts are focused on continuing to enhance the curriculum and programming, the student experience and supporting the needs of a growing and diverse student body.
INITIATIVES Become San Francisco’s first IB-Middle Years Program (MYP) by 2021, retain IB-PYP and obtain CAIS, WASC and CIS accreditations. Obtain Parificazione as an Italian school abroad Ensure excellent outcomes and matriculation for our graduates in 2020 Communicate the pedagogical journey from PYP thru MYP and childhood academic and socio-emotional development Become recognized as the benchmark Reggio Emilia Program in North America Enhance programming with STEM, socioemotional learning, learning difference support and co-curricular programs like sports, arts, leadership and student life. Continue to invest in technology to support student/teacher collaboration, student work and administrative management
La Scuola defines community as its students, parents, faculty, administration and the broader Italian community, and our local and international neighbors. At La Scuola, we think of diversity holistically, not only focusing on race or visual identity but thinking more broadly of cultural differences, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, family structure, learning differences, etc. More importantly, we focus on inclusion and ensuring that everyone in our community feels comfortable to bring his/her full self to school every day and is willing and able to understand others’ differences. There are areas that we believe we do really well in, specifically: cultural and language diversity.
Today, we have over 30 different languages spoken in the homes of La Scuola families, which is a great gift that doesn’t only bring language diversity but also a very rich set of experiences from all over the world. However, there are areas that we also need to focus on to improve, including racial, socioeconomic and sexual orientation diversity. We plan to focus our efforts in this strategic plan on understanding these complex subjects, identifying goals for our community and putting in place outreach and support programs to ensure that a diverse community thrives at La Scuola.
INITIATIVES Conduct a community-wide survey to help us to define multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion and equity at La Scuola. Identify ways to enhance and support diversity across all different facets (classroom, community events, curriculum, enrollment, etc.) Promote a shared understanding of La Scuola’s singular benefits by streamlining our brand promise and value proposition Strengthen the role of PALS in promoting volunteerism, participation in and support of school functions and facilitates the integration of new families into the school community. Engage with our external communities (neighbors, alumni, Italian) to strengthen our connection and pave the way for future collaboration.
To move beyond sustainability to thrivability requires the entire school community to understand how philanthropy, volunteerism, and innovation can work together to advance our mission and realize our dreams. Working together with the Board of Directors, Parent Association, Advancement Office and
the community within and outside La Scuola, our aim is to continue to steward La Scuola toward investing prudently in our growth and identifying ways in which La Scuola can diversify its revenue streams to grow while supporting our families and faculty, as well as our long-term goals.
INITIATIVES Continue to manage La Scuola’s budget prudently through its growth Convene an ad hoc committee to explore how La Scuola can grow non tuition revenue Develop programs to support enrollment growth: tuition assistance, marketing & retention Significantly strengthen and sustain philanthropic support within and outside the parent body by creating a culture of philanthropy Begin Embrace Comprehensive Campaign to raise the necessary funds for campus expansions Undertake meaningful fundraising to impact our people, places and programs short and long term.
THE CREATION OF THIS PLAN In June 2017, the Board of Trustees of La Scuola International School formed the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) to review progress on the implementation of the 2012-2017 strategic plan and to design a process that would engage the school community in identifying the school’s opportunities and challenges in order to articulate the priorities for the next five years.
This led to discussions about academics, the student experience, faculty, diversity and inclusion, finances, facilities and our community.
Parents, faculty, students, staff, alumni and current and former trustees partook in focus and discussion groups to help the SPC to articulate the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan.
The goals presented herein are high level. An implementation plan and metrics will be created by the Board, Head of School and SPC. Progress will be communicated in the Fall and Spring of each academic year.
Participants were asked two questions: What are La Scuola’s challenges and opportunities? What are the endearing and enduring qualities of La Scuola?
Sub-committees were formed to further define topics and the data was collated to produce five goals for the 2018-2023 strategic plan.
STRATEGIC PLANNING COMMITTEE
Robin Bonaso Shannon Cleary Greg Daniels Heather Dolan David Donahue Aaron Harms Gerald Jose Jeff Kott Bridget Lanza Federica Lentini Douglas Lowney Lama Nachman Sally Peterson Dunja Solari Loring Sagan
Valentina Imbeni, Ph.D. Head of School Claudia Volpi Chair, Board of Directors
Dogpatch Campus 728 20th St., San Francisco, CA 94107 Fell Campus 735 Fell St., San Francisco, CA 94117 Mission Campus 3250 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94107