Executive Summary

It is with excitement and pride we present to you “Ready. Set. Go!”, Marburn Academy’s next three-year strategic plan. Influenced by a global pandemic and aware we are in transitionary point in our history, our community has created a plan that is shaped by our mission, as well as a great deal of compassion, empathy, courage, and belief.

The culmination of the community’s collective efforts and voice, the plan reflects two key themes. First, Marburn Academy has sound underpinnings to build upon as we look to continuously improve in every respect. Second, our ambition and belief in our mission drives us to reach, support, and serve even more students, families, and educators in the future.

These themes ring true to the very spirit of Marburn—a community that believes deeply in the power of education and the potential of every child.

Important to any bold endeavor, this plan will only succeed if we are committed, deliberate in our approach, and flexible enough to meet the challenges of an everchanging world. In this regard, we hope you will join us in making this plan a success. If we do so, we can be confident, that three years from now, each of us will look back with optimism and gratitude.

Go Panthers!

Eldrich A. Carr, III Head of School

Introduction

As Marburn Academy entered into its 40th Anniversary year, and with new leadership at the helm, the Board of Trustees engaged consulting firm, Mission Matters Group (MMG), to lead the organization through a strategic planning process.

MMG’s charge was to lead a collaborative and engaging process that would lead to a plan that reaffirmed organizational identity, clarified direction, and aligned stakeholders on where we are going and why over the next three years. The result is a plan that is designed to be a working, dynamic tool, road-map, and strategic guide that equips the Executive Team and Board of Trustees to lead the organization into our future.

The engagement process launched in the summer of 2021 when a core team made up of Marburn executive team members and MMG began meeting to design the process for engaging Marburn’s community of stakeholders and developing the plan. From the onset, engaging a broad and diverse group of stakeholders in the discovery and planning process was a top priority of Marburn’s leadership team to ensure a holistic perspective and understanding of the community’s vision for the future. To support this effort, a Steering Committee was formed, comprised of internal faculty and staff members, along with several board members.

Through several months of discovery interviews, faculty, staff and community input surveys, an on-site school visit, and Board retreat, a key set of findings were identified and shared with Core Planning Group members and the Steering Committee. The discovery process helped to develop the plan’s Strategic Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) which serve as the foundation to Marburn’s 3-year vision.

Through a series of planning meetings, the Steering Committee weighed in on elements of Marburn’s organizational identity by defining a core set of beliefs that drive the organization’s “why” and a key set of performance indicators that measure success year over year. In addition, the Steering Committee helped to define and refine the 3year Strategic Objectives and an accompanying set of Key Results for each objective. The outcome of this process enabled the drafting of "Ready. Set. Go!"