Think- Tank Overview
The Think-Tank was an exciting step in the Smithville School District’s strategic planning process!
The Think-Tank helped to define a broad vision, values, goals and directions. The Think-Tank was conducted as two highly participatory 4-hour workshops that produced a preferred future scenario validated by its participants. The scenario-based Think-Tank is a tool to gain better understanding of community priorities and goals that contribute to the creation of effective strategies and actions for program and resource allocation. A range of plausible future scenarios were developed to act as a testing ground to assess resilience and consequences.
For the Smithville School District, this process endeavored to answer important questions such as:
- What should the school district become and what does the ‘Portrait of the Smithville School District Graduate’ look like?
- What makes the school district unique and special and how can the district use these characteristics to prepare students for the future?
- How does school district want to position itself – locally, nationally, and internationally?
- How will community stakeholder preferences fit into this vision?
- How should funds be invested and leveraged to build resiliency for the school district?
The Think-Tank methodology allowed community stakeholders to tackle these questions in an engaging and thought-provoking manner. This then lead to the clarification of the vision that will guide the school district’s decision-making looking out to school year 2028-2029. To the right is a visual outline of how the Think-Tank scenario-planning methodology works:
MORE INFORMATION
For more information about the Smithville School District Strategic Action Planning Project, please contact:
Assistant Superintendent for Academic Services
