School News
Reviewing, Rewriting, and Revitalizing Our Mission
A school’s Mission Statement serves as its fundamental guiding light, offering its Board, its leadership team, and indeed, every community member a vehicle to clarify priorities and evaluate and steer decisions. It boldly states to the public and to prospective families the school’s reason to exist, and it reflects and creates a shared identity within and about the school. Reviewing and revitalizing a school's mission statement is an important and necessary process that independent schools follow regularly. Last February, after a thorough and thoughtful process, the Board of Directors voted to approve our revitalized mission statement.
The Fayerweather Board of Directors formed a Mission Committee in 2019, tasked with guiding the process and writing the new statement. The committee comprised representatives that included staff, board members, and current parents. The process envisioned required careful planning, robust research, and extensive input from important community members, including current and former families, alums, alum parents, students, teachers, and administrators.
Immediately getting to work, the Mission Committee conducted a comprehensive research and analysis of the school's Mission, Vision, and Values Statements by looking at over 70 North American progressive schools, including 30 within a 30-mile radius of Fayerweather. They reviewed FSS’s mission statement as well as the school's strategic plan, vision statement, and core values to ensure that the new mission statement would align with these documents. Approved by the full Board, the Mission Committee evolved into a Mission Working Group that developed a multi-step process that articulated the whys, whos, and hows of the work to be done. The process would be to define terms, develop criteria for what should be included in a new statement, and gather extensive feedback from various FSS stakeholders to ensure that everyone was given a voice during the process. The goal was to produce a new mission statement that would reflect the values and goals of the entire school community. Input included feedback from the recent AISNE accreditation, stories gathered from historical FSS documents, focused work with the entire Board of Directors, and surveys and focus groups with key FSS constituent groups - · parents and caregivers, community members, alums and alum parents, students, teachers, staff, administrators, the Advancement team, and the Marketing Committee.
Finally, putting pen to paper, the Mission Working Group used all of this information to draft a new mission statement, which was then road-tested with various members of the community, revised, and presented to the Board for approval. Fayerweather has a long history of being engaged and aware of what is happening in the greater world outside of its walls. This new statement aimed to be just as self-aware as it is future-oriented by reflecting the school's aspirations for the future.
The journey of rewriting and revitalizing Fayerweather’s mission statement was a collaborative, data-driven process made possible by the passionate Fayerweather community. And on Wednesday, February 15, 2023, the Fayerweather Board of Directors unanimously voted to approve the new Mission Statement.
Fayerweather Street School, the Board of Directors, Faculty and Staff, and the Missions Committee are proud to present the revitalized Mission Statement.
Fayerweather Street School | 765 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 | 617-876-4746
Fayerweather is a private PreK, kindergarten, elementary and middle school. We engage each child’s intellect.