NILES — The Brandywine board of education and administration is launching a new initiative to guide Brandywine through a three- to five-year strategic plan.

The purpose of this initiative is to help Brandywine’s leadership develop new goals and strategies for continuing to offer an excellent education for students, while using scarce public education resources in the most effective and efficient way.

Stakeholder feedback is an important part of the planning process. Community members, parents, students, teachers and all district staff members will have the opportunity to give input on the strengths of the district, opportunities for improvement, barriers for implementation, and their vision for the district.

Stakeholder input, along with essential district data, provides the basis for the district to choose approximately five priority goals to be implemented over the next three to five years.

The benefits of the strategic planning process are many. Most notable are:

• It provides integrated, important input from community and staff

• It presents a succinct and graphic picture of the district’s current status

• It sets focused strategic goals that identify target areas to improve student achievement

• It clearly delineates the role of the Board of Education and the superintendent/staff in strategic planning

• It uses data to set goals and make important decisions

• It helps identify areas to allocate increasingly scarce resources

• It aligns Board priorities with school improvement processes

“As school board members, we have to make the best decisions in these challenging, changing times,” said Janis Exner, school board president. “It is essential that we use data and stakeholder input to make decisions and to set priorities for our district.”

Scott Morrell, Senior Facilitator from the Michigan Association of School Boards will work with Brandywine for the next three months to complete the strategic plan.

Morrell said, “The board and administration are working closely with MASB to develop a process and strategic plan that is stakeholder based, data driven. I am excited to work with the team at Brandywine on this very important process.”