Lead with Light: Our Strategic Vision

We’re excited to embark on our next strategic planning process, a community-wide endeavor to imagine and align on a sustainable, future vision for the school and create pathways to build that future together. Below is a letter to the San Francisco Friends School community from our Head of School, Pankti Sevak. 

 

Dear Friends,

We are excited to announce the launch of our 2024-25 Strategic Planning process.

Strategic planning is an important practice that independent schools undergo periodically to imagine a sustainable, future vision for the school and create pathways to build that future together. We are well positioned to begin this work, following the renewal of our CAIS accreditation and since our last Strategic Pathways were implemented in 2018.

This exploration will help us clarify our shared aspirations as a community and define the steps we need to take to achieve them. Over the next few months, we will engage broadly and deeply (through a survey, focus groups and collaborative work) with parents, students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors and the Board to develop a shared understanding of our school community today and to design a roadmap for our future. 

To assist us with this important work, we are collaborating with Mission & Data, a consulting firm that specializes in this field. They will engage in research and collect input from our community to help us develop our strategic vision for our school’s future.

A task force of Board members, faculty, and staff will work with Mission & Data throughout to guide the process. This task force strives to represent the diversity of our community and a broad range of perspectives, taking into consideration the variety of roles, skills and experiences that people bring to the group. 

The 2024-25 Strategic Planning Task Force members are: 

• Camilo Acosta, Board Member
• Seth Brenzel, Board Member 
• Sabrina Brooks, 8th grade Humanities
• Rebecca Foster, Parent (3rd grade and 5th grade) and former trustee
• Gaby Mishev, Board Member, Parent (5th and 7th grade)
• Veronique Kessler, CFOO
• Rich Oberman, 5th grade Science
• Yvonne Neira-Perez, Board Co-clerk, Parent (6th Grade)
• Nadia Ruiz, 1st grade teacher 
• Lizzie Rogal, Head of Middle School
• Pankti Sevak, Head of School, Parent (K and 3rd grade)
• Patrice Wakeley, Director of Institutional Equity and Belonging

 

Thank you for sharing your voice as we embark on this process together. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or suggestions as the strategic planning process proceeds. 

Warmly,

Pankti Sevak, Head of School 

Gaby Mishev, co-clerk of Strategic Planning Task Force 

Rebecca Foster, co-clerk of Strategic Planning Task Force 

Camilo Acosta, co-clerk of Strategic Planning Task Force

Seth Brenzel,  co-clerk of Strategic Planning Task Force