How to make your Mission (and Vision and Values) more meaningful
Every few years, it seems school districts get the itch to change their Mission and/or Vision and/or Values Statements.
Maybe it’s the arrival of new district leadership, or a new group of Board members, or some new buzzwords flying around public education that are putting everyone in a dither over whether or not these district pronouncements of purpose are up to date enough. One thing is for certain, when a plan is hatched to update one or more of these statements, you can be certain a committee will be involved.
That committee will then dissect the current statements, parsing each word as if it were Chinese (a language where words can have four different meanings, depending on the speaker’s inflection). They will scribble, erase, use sticky notes and fill up flip chart pages. In the end, they will likely come up with something that reads a lot like what’s been on the wall at the Central Office for years already, or something you will likely find at some other school district, somewhere in this great land.
Why? Because school districts look at Mission, Vision and Values Statements and see them as something of a public job description – including practically every responsibility except the “other duties as assigned” line. Stakeholders (except the zealots that hang on every word) who make an effort to read them, run the risk of narcolepsy when the jargon finally becomes overwhelming.
But statements such as these can be less obligatory and more inspiring if school districts would remember that stakeholders have a much more limited field of vision regarding a school district’s role in the lives of students, their families and the community.
In our research over the last 22 years, these are the marching orders that typical patrons – meaning about 80 percent of your community – have for their school districts. Bear these in mind when you start fiddling with your Mission, Vision and Values:
- Teach and practice responsibility
School districts should not see themselves as de facto parents (even if some parents see it that way). But, because accepting and welcoming responsibility is a key to success in life, stressing the role it plays in the life of the district and those it is teaching will send a simple, yet powerful message.
- Put students in a position to be successful
The growing acceptance that not all students will – or should – go to college, has tied some school districts up in knots as they try to figure out how to work the idea of CTE and other such programs into their Mission, Vision and Values language. This doesn’t have to be complicated: Make it clear that your goal is student success, and let the community interpret what that means to it.
- Stay current with what’s important
Most stakeholders don’t want to have to keep up to date on the latest trends in education; that’s what they expect their school district to do. Avoid language that risks having an expiration date, by keeping the commitment simple and universal.
Note the pattern: Simple, declarative statements are what will catch the eye of most stakeholders much more than dramatic promises loaded with bombast and school-eze. After all, what’s wrong with simply saying, “Preparing students of today for success in life tomorrow?”