What Our New Strategic Plan Means for IMS Families, Staff, and Donors

If you have a child enrolled at one of our 14 schools, you probably want to know if instruction will be changing in the years ahead.

If you are employed in a school or the network office, you probably want to know whether changes will make IMS a better place to work.

If you donate to one of our schools or to the network, you probably want to know if changes will make our finances more sustainable.

The answers are yes, yes, and yes: Changes – for the better – are coming to instruction, employment, and finances, among other things.

The Strategic Plan Independence Mission Schools adopted earlier this year is a document identifying and prioritizing changes designed to raise up our schools from solid to superior over the next four years. It is also a roadmap to become the top-tier academic destination we want to be by 2025.

While we are incredibly proud of the hard work being done by teachers and students in all of our schools, and the progress already made over the past eight years, there is more to be done.

IMS exists to serve students and families, so it should be no surprise that two of our four strategic priorities are significantly improved educational outcomes for students and a better overall school experience that leads to high satisfaction among students and families. The other two priorities are aimed at strengthening our organization’s finances and evolving the role of our board.

Also in the plan:

  • Raise student literacy achievement by fully implementing a new English Language Arts curriculum this fall
  • Improve student math performance by completing implementation of our new math curriculum this year
  • Improve recruitment and retention of quality teachers by making salaries and benefits more competitive
  • Support principals in ways that enable them to devote more time to instructional leadership
  • Increase our focus on students and families to learn what they want from their experiences at our schools
  • Improve the quality of our facilities by making repairs and upgrades to buildings