Strategic Plan

The Troy School District is one of the best in the state. But even when a school district is doing well, it cannot afford to stand still. Our world is changing fast, and our schools have to keep up. A strategic plan is a roadmap that helps a district go from where it is today to one of the best in the country. We need to set ambitious goals that push us to do more than just keep things the way they are, and to challenge everyone in the community to imagine an even better future for our kids. We must start with a clear articulation of our core Mission Statement, creating an inspiring Vision, and committed Values. These three things act like a north star that will help guide every decision we make.

Yet a plan is only as good as the action that follows. Progress and lasting impact can only be achieved when we track our progress and hold ourselves accountable, which requires us to focus on our data. Informed by data and research, we set our core Strategic Objectives. These must be matched with clear Key Results. These statistics are essential for the Board and administration to monitor progress towards priorities.

This focus on data ensures we are making decisions based on facts, not assumptions or guesswork. Only through rigorous use of data is it possible to evaluate whether our initiatives for achieving the strategic objectives are actually working and then pivot or make other smart adjustments along the way. Without this cycle of planning, doing, and checking our results, even the best district can miss chances to improve and might not be ready for what’s next for our students.

Current Mission Statement

The purpose of the Troy School District is to ensure learning for all members of the school community.

Proposed Mission Statement

The Troy School District inspires all students to discover their potential and the joy of learning through a commitment to curiosity, creativity, and academic excellence for the entire school community.

Justification

The original statement describes what a school district is obligated to do. The revised statement declares what the Troy School District aspires to be, making it a far more powerful and effective mission to guide and unite the community. While aspiration should also be reflected in the Vision Statement, it is absolutely essential for empowering the Mission Statement.

Current Vision Statement

The Troy School District will become an exemplary learning community that supports innovation and is committed to continuous improvement. The Troy School District will be a place where a collaborative community develops curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment to ensure all students learn.

Proposed Vision Statement

The Troy School District will be a collaborative community defined by its commitment to building a culture of curiosity, creativity, and continuous growth. We will be a model for how to inspire and equip all learners to joyfully pursue and achieve their highest potential.

Justification

The existing statement focuses on processes and systems rather than people and culture. My proposed Vision Statement paints a more vivid and inspiring picture of the future, while the existing statement reads more like an administrative plan. A Vision Statement should be a declaration of a desired future that gives meaning to the work, inspires the people involved, and creates a clear, compelling destination for the entire community to strive toward.

Current Set of Core Values

• The Troy School District is committed to excellence.
• The Troy School District is a key element in the community and has a responsibility to be a resource for enhancing the quality of life for all citizens.
• The educational process is a partnership with the entire community including family, business, and community organizations.
• The educational programs will provide each student the best opportunity to learn, to develop personally and to experience success.
• Public education is fundamental to the preservation and advancement of freedom, democracy, and an effective free enterprise system.
• Positive self-concept and respect for others is fundamental to teaching and learning.
• The educational process will allow for the unique qualities of each individual.
  

Proposed Set of Core Values

While I share all of these values, I would restate them slightly differently:

• Excellence: Pursuing excellence drives the efforts of all students, staff, and community
• Resourceful: Striving to be a cornerstone of the community to enhance the quality of life for all residents.
• Engagement: Collaboration that unites our schools with the families, businesses, and community organizations that define Troy.
• Empowerment: Every student is equipped to learn deeply, grow confidently, and achieve personal success.
• Citizenship: Develop the skills to think critically and act democratically in order to shape a future of freedom and opportunity for all.
• Respect and Empathy: Honor and celebrate the unique qualities of every individual to build a community founded on deep self-respect and mutual empathy.
  

Justification

I believe the Set of Core Values that I am proposing functions as a clear, actionable, and inspiring guide for behavior. While I do not disagree with the current set, it consists of passive and wordy institutional belief statements that are difficult to remember and act upon. I believe we need a true Set of Core Values that can be more easily embedded into the culture of the District to actively shape its future. The existing set is simply a list of well-intentioned belief statements that lack the clarity and energy to drive meaningful action.

Current Strategic Objectives

• Early Childhood to Career: Learning opportunities designed to educate and support children from their earliest years through graduation to adulthood.
• Equity and Well-Being: Ensuring all students experience the academic, social, and emotional support they need to reach their potential.
• Deep Learning: Deepening learning with commitment to developing life-long skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, character, creativity, citizenship, and communication.
• Building Capacity: Providing regular opportunities for staff and families to learn from one another and from local, state, and global partnerships.

Aside from 100% proficiency on ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies, the District does not have well-articulate success metrics for these objectives.

Proposed Strategic Objectives

I propose a five Strategic Objectives along with their Key Results in order to motivate and organize our district improvement efforts.

Objective #1: Stabilize Enrollment

TSD can mitigate or even reverse the project declines in enrollment through better investment and prioritization of initiatives to recruit and retain Troy resident students. Ultimately, increasing student enrollment is a critical component of achieving long-term financial stability in order to preserve the educational programming we expect. As with every public school district in Michigan, TSD’s funding is directly tied to its student count through the state’s per-pupil foundation allowance. Consequently, even a minor decline in enrollment can translate into a significant budgetary impact, reducing the district’s ability to retain teachers, maintain small class sizes, and offer the diverse academic, athletic, and extracurricular activities that define the Troy school experience.

Objective #2: Maximize Attendance

The District’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has stalled in large part to the increase in Chronic Absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10% or more of school days for any reason (18 days in a full school year), poses a significant threat to a student’s overall development and success. The consistent loss of instructional time directly correlates with lower academic achievement, including reduced literacy and math skills, and a higher risk of dropping out in later years.

Objective #3: Assure Fiscal Responsibility

The Troy School District must continue to exercise rigorous stewardship of public resources in a landscape of inadequate and inequitable state funding. In short, TSD must aim to “squeeze the most value” from every dollar through a disciplined focus on restoring and maintaining a 15% fund balance. This objective transcends mere accounting; it is a governance commitment to prioritize instructional spending, ensure long-term stability, and maintain the community trust necessary to protect the high-quality student experience that defines TSD.

Objective #4: Restore Academic Achievement

TSD has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic on state standardized assessments and needs to accelerate its return to pre-COVID excellence. The district must improve overall levels of proficiency and college readiness to pre-COVID levels in 3rd grade ELA, 8th grade Math, and 11th grade College Readiness. To accomplish this goal, TSD must also close achievement gaps of vulnerable groups of students.

Objective #4: Trust Teachers’ Talents

TSD must establish a critical objective to empower and retain its highly-valued teachers, recognizing them as the primary drivers of student success and essential for creating the supportive and effective learning environment that our students need. High teacher turnover can lead to instructional inconsistency, decreased student achievement, and a weakened school community, making the retention of our skilled educators an essential investment in our students’ futures

Justification

These new objectives are specific, problem-oriented, and timely, addressing the concrete challenges the Troy School District faces for the remainder of the decade. On the other hand, the existing set functions more like a set of enduring, aspirational pillars, which are also valuable but serve a different purpose.

In an ideal world, we would not still be trying to recover from COVID in 2026 and beyond. Many districts have recovered, but TSD has not, in part because the previous strategic plan did not focus on fixing attendance, learning loss, etc. These proposed objectives provides the specific, measurable, and time-bound focus required to solve the problems of today and future in order to move the district forward. While the existing strategic objectives represent a strong foundation of guiding principles, they are not a plan of action.

Current Key Results

The District’s strategic plan does not clearly define Key Results or otherwise provide a comprehensive set of success metrics. While they have utilized an OKR framework in various Accountability Plan Updates delivered to the board since the current strategic plan was adopted, these are in actuality an odd assortment of various initiatives and projects. In my view, of the many listed on various board presentations, very few are strong Key Results because many are not S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

In terms of what was part of the Strategic Plan, on the TSD strategic plan website, they present the following four goals, all related to academic achievement:

• Literacy: All students will be on track to be college/career ready in literacy.
• Mathematics: All students will be on track to be college/career ready in mathematics.
• Science: All students will be on track to be college/career ready in science.
• Social Studies: All students will be on track to be college/career ready in social studies.

While these goals may be Ambitious and Relevant to one of the objectives, they are not very Specific, Achievable, or Time-Bound. They also only relate to only one of four Strategic Objectives. Finally, it is unclear what the measure actually is: is it 100% proficiency across all four tested content areas? If so, which grades and which assessments? Therefore, in my view, these are not S.M.A.R.T. goals and thus not very strong Key Results.

In order to motivate others to achieve results, you must clearly define what success is and be able to articulate how it will be measured. Furthermore, these targets must also be Achievable, or you will lose the buy-in of various stakeholders and engagement from staff. No district of comparable size in the country has ever achieved 100% proficiency across all grades and subjects, so it is unrealistic that 100% proficiency is Realistic. Therefore, rather than provide clarity of purpose, these goals are not well considered and thus not effective as drivers of improvement.

Therefore, I would strongly advise overhauling the Key Results section regardless of what Objectives the board adopts for the next TSD Strategic Plan. If my proposed four Objectives that I identified were adopted, here are proposals for associated Key Results.

Proposed Key Results by Proposed Objective

Objective #1: Stabilize Enrollment

• Key Result 1.1: Achieve +20 Net Promoter score on a district-wide stakeholder survey of families (see future blog post on stakeholder surveys)
• Key Result 1.2: Achieve of 75% Completion Rate on the Family Exit Survey (see future blog post on stakeholder surveys)
• Key Result 1.3: Increase TSD resident market share to 90% by 2028-29 (from 88.4% in 2025-26; +202 FTE)
• Key Result 1.4: Re-establish total K-12 district enrollment to at least 12,250 FTE by 2028-29 (from 12,040 in Fall 2024; +210 FTE)

Objective #2: Maximize Attendance

• Key Result 2.1: Reduce chronic absenteeism in Elementary (grades K-5) from 11.2% (2024-25) to under 6% by 2028-29 (it was 5.8% in 2018-19, the last pre-COVID year)
• Key Result 2.2: Reduce chronic absenteeism in Middle School (grades 6-8) from 11.0% (2024-25) to under 6% by 2028-29 (it was 6.2% in 2018-19)
• Key Result 2.3: Reduce chronic absenteeism in High School (grades 9-12) from 17.4% (2024-25) to under 10% by 2028-29 (it was 5.3% in 2018-19)
• Key Result 2.4: Achieve a +20 Net Promoter score on a district-wide stakeholder survey of students (see future blog post on stakeholder surveys)
  

Objective #3: Assure Fiscal Responsibility

• Key Result 3.1: Restore and maintain a 15% fund balance by 2028-29 (currently projected at 13.6% as of January 2026)
• Key Result 3.2: Maintain at least a 65% Instructional Spending Ratio for every year through 2028-29 (i.e., instructional expenditures divided by total expenditures; currently at 65.8% in 2024-25)
• Key Result 3.3: Maintain a Revenue/Expenditure Ratio between 0.98 and 1.02 for every year through 2028-29 (i.e., maintain a balanced budget such that the difference between the two is within 2 percentage points)
• Key Result 3.4: Zero audit findings for every year through 2028-29

Objective #4: Restore Academic Achievement

• Key Result 4.1: Improve 3rd grade ELA proficiency on M-STEP from 68% (2024-25) to 75% by 2028-29 (it was 74% in 2018-19)
• Key Result 4.2: Improve 8th grade Math proficiency on PSAT from 64% (2024-25) to 75% by 2028-29 (it was 75% in 2018-19)
• Key Result 4.3: Improve 11th grade College Readiness (defined as scoring on the SAT at least a 480 on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing [EBRW] and at least a 530 on Math) from 59% (2024-25) to 70% by 2028-29 (it was 70% in 2018-19)
• Key Result 4.4: Reduce achievement gaps for Economically Disadvantaged, English Language Learners, and Students with Disabilities on 3rd grade ELA, 8th grade Math, and 11th grade College Readiness by 10 percentage points by 2028-29 (see future blog post on achievement gaps)
  

Objective #5: Trust Teachers’ Talents

• Key Result #5.1: Exceed 85% in Teacher Retention across the district in every year through 2028-29 (it was 88.5% in 2021-22 [earliest available] and 80.5% in 2023-24 [latest available])
• Key Result #5.2: Maintain an increase of 3% in Compensation Costs per Staff FTE in every year through 2028-29 (it was +4.6% in 2020-21 [earliest available] and -1.6% in 2023-24)
• Key Result #5.3: Show +20 Net Promoter score on a district-wide stakeholder survey of teachers (see future blog post on stakeholder surveys)