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Strategic Plan
We have recently completed a strategic plan for the continued success of St. Croix Lutheran High School's ministry to young people. These four areas are strategically important to St. Croix:
1. Mission
2. Academic Offering
3. Recruitment
4. Financial Health
Mission
Our stated mission is "to educate the total student - spiritually, intellectually, and physically - in a caring, Christian family community." That mission statement is as relevant and appropriate today as ever and serves as the foundation of our strategy.
Initiatives:
- Develop broader and more consistent communication of our mission to our prospective students and their parents, to our member congregations, to our support community, and to the community at large.
- Work constantly to insure that the values expressed so well in our mission statement carry over into school operations, academics, and student life.
- Reinforce the leadership model and team of St. Croix to insure effective governance, visionary and creative leadership, talent development, and organizational depth.
Academic Offerings
St. Croix is a college preparatory school. Our classes are targeted to provide our students with a comprehensive education that will prepare them for any school or career choice. We need to maintain a high-quality curriculum with sufficient breadth, depth, and challenge to meet the needs of our students, while serving the needs of those students who require special assistance to succeed academically.
Initiatives:
- Improve ways to develop and maintain a high quality staff, trained and equipped to support our evolving offering.
- Create programs that complement the needs of our students varied interests and abilities to ensure their academic success.
- Support the expanded use of technology in the classroom environment as both a tool to improve teaching and learning performance and as an integral element of curriculum.
- Complete our initiative in curriculum mapping as a tool for integration across the St. Croix curriculum and into our member grade schools.
- Pursue our master site plan for future capital additions to support an expanded fine arts program, a second gymnasium, a chapel, and expansion of the dormitories.
Recruitment
Historically, we have served the children of member and associated congregations. With the creation of our international program in 1995, we introduced a new student population to the school environment. The demographics of our traditional student group are changing rapidly and, over the next ten years, the number of children in this segment is expected to drop by over twenty percent. To continue to grow, we must undertake an aggressive recruitment program that is forward-looking and open to new prospective student population segments.
Initiatives:
- Increase enrollment to 500 by 2013
- Increase percentage of member and associated congregation students who choose to enroll at St. Croix through improvements in recruitment programs and prospect tracking and communications.
- Continue the international student program through aggressive recruitment.
- Increase diversity at St. Croix by actively recruiting students of color.
- Provide services to facilitate an increasingly diverse student population including support programs, student activities, transportation programs, financial assistance, and the recruitment of racially diverse faculty and staff.
- Expand financial assistance programs.
Financial Health
Our financial resources are adequate to support our current school enrollment and operations with annual tuition increases, but not sufficient to support our strategic objectives. Congregational support revenue has been declining for many years. Development income is derived primarily from general appeals and fundraising events. Our Ministry in Motion campaign raised only 50% of its target. To achieve our strategy, we need to stabilize and improve our current development programs and aggressively develop alternate sources of revenue and support.
Initiatives
- Undertake programs to streamline operations and control costs
- Apply tuition increases at a level necessary to stay competitive and support a quality program
- Improve the performance of our general appeals and fundraising events
- Create and implement a Planned Giving program
- Undertake a strategic plan campaign centered on our strategic priorities for increasing support for:
- Endowment funds for tuition support,
- Endowed academic programs,
- Capital improvements to support the master site plan,
- Debt reduction
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