The planning process consists of seven stages, each one a critical step in building a sustainable district arts plan. These stages are summarized below:

STAGE 1. Building a Community Arts Team
This opening stage involves the recruitment of a core planning team that represents the broad range of stakeholders in your school district community.

STAGE 2. Assessing the Current Arts Education Program
The first charge of the planning team is to collect and analyze information about the district’s current arts program in order to identify strengths as well as areas for improvement and expansion.

STAGE 3. Establishing a District Arts Policy
Once the planning team understands the current arts program, it is important to establish an overarching district-level policy for adoption by the school board. This policy codifies the district’s beliefs and values about the arts in student development and learning, and states the district’s intent to provide a quality, standards-based, equitable education in the arts to all students.

STAGE 4. Generating the Strategic Plan
In this stage, the planning team engages in an intensive series of focused conversations and work sessions, through which your vision, strategic directions, and action plan will be articulated.

STAGE 5. Developing a Funding Strategy
Once the goals are established, it is critical to assess the current funding landscape and future prospects in order to develop a realistic, sustainable, phased plan for the funding and rollout of the arts program.

STAGE 6. Presenting and Adopting the Plan
To increase visibility, commitment, and accountability for the plan, it is essential that the district school board formally adopt the plan. It is a great opportunity for the diverse planning team members to present the plan to the district leadership and the education community.

STAGE 7. Implementing the Plan
We’ve all experienced plans that somehow fail to take flight in the implementation stage. This chapter will help you create a proactive system for launching, monitoring progress, and sustaining the momentum of your district arts plan in the years ahead.

Click here to access the Strategic Planning Spiral Diagram [PDF: 382K], which depicts the steps of the planning process, and reflects the ongoing cyclical nature of strategic planning and implementation.