Strategic Planning

Albert Lea Area Schools is embarking on a strategic planning process. This process will allow the district to develop an up-to-date operational plan and provide clarity and focus on our work. We are partnering with an organization called TeamWorks International in a “classroom to boardroom” strategic planning process. 

The overall process and strategic plan will be created with input from Albert Lea Area Schools students, staff, families, and community members focused on future system-wide enhancements to improve outcomes for students. 

TeamWorks uses a process called "classroom to boardroom." This process is in reverse, or upside down, compared to traditional planning, in that we will start with the classroom and end up at the boardroom to determine the desired daily experiences of stakeholders. 

The desired daily experience is a much different approach to gathering stakeholder feedback. Instead of asking the question, what do you think the district should do over the next three to five years? We ask primary stakeholders – the students, families, and staff – when you engage with school or when you come to school, what is the desired daily experience? What does that look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? The feedback that is received is what we use to set the table on how we build our operational plans moving forward.

After that, we map into the vision card, which allows us to measure our progress in delivering on the desired daily experience from the primary stakeholders. The third phase of our process is setting the strategic plan. 

Within the strategic plan process, we work with the planning team to develop a three-year operational plan that will describe the work, the initiatives, and activities that will take place for the school district to be able to deliver on the desired daily experiences for the primary stakeholders. We also incorporate school improvement plans, as well as department improvement plans. Finally, we work with the School Board to map out a strategic roadmap: this is the mission, vision and core values; this is management work or the district work; this is the board's governance work; and this is how we can best deliver on that process.

When the planning process is complete we will have a clear and unified vision of the district's purpose and how to work together to bring about our desired outcomes and our core values.