This year has been a year of growth for our school, one of listening and learning from you and one of visioning and planning for the future with you.
There was so much important activity that was accomplished this year! We launched the all-community survey in the fall. Our work with Crane + Peters included a number of focus group sessions to hear what is on your mind as we work to strengthen community. With the release of their Insights & Implications white paper, we held Zoom meetings with families across all three campuses to get further feedback on your reaction to the findings from C+P. And we have been involved in strategic planning for the future of our school that has included input from over 100 members of our community who have participated in Design Teams to discuss key areas of focus for the next 3 to 5 years. As I shared in the Zoom sessions across all three campuses, it was my intention to share back with the community what we heard from you, and openly address some of the questions you raised.
A common theme in the sessions related to the merger between Moravian Academy and Swain, and questions related to the role of religion at Moravian post-merger. Because these topics are the responsibility of the Board of Trustees, the Board has addressed them in this FAQ. This document will also be available on the Moravian Academy website.
Our Zoom sessions also included other topics that were wide-ranging, from whether curricula will change, what will happen with uniforms, how we can increase student involvement in the design of our future, how to strengthen the overall sense of community, and get more people involved. Below I would like to provide a few updates as we near the end of the school year that address these questions and more.
Jump to question:
Will there be any changes to the uniforms on any campus for next year?
There is no intention to make any changes for the 2023-2024 school year. Any changes being planned for the 2024-2025 school year that could involve a significant change or financial impact to families would be communicated months in advance so that families can plan accordingly.
Are any significant curricular changes being considered for the 2023-2024 school year that are related to the merger?
There are no curricular changes being considered for the 2023-2024 school year that are related to the merger. There is a schedule change that will begin for the next school year. The Downtown and Merle-Smith Campuses have been operating on an 8-day rotating “COMENIUS” schedule. Faculty across all three campuses have engaged in months-long conversations about the current schedule, its pros and cons, and whether a change in the schedule would benefit our students. With engagement from faculty across all three campuses, the school will transition to a 10-day schedule beginning the 2023-2024 school year. This will allow for programming to align with a weekly (5 day) schedule [as the Swain Campus currently does] or to rotate based on the specific needs of each campus. This schedule provides flexibility for our PS-8th grade campuses and our upper school campus to design academic programming that reflects the needs of the students at each campus, while it also provides greater support for faculty members who serve students on more than one campus.
In addition to the schedule change, there are some other smaller changes specific to the individual campuses that the Campus Directors are considering in collaboration with faculty, students and families. Modifications are a natural part of the school improvement process and are informed by research on teaching and learning, feedback from students and families, and engagement with leading institutions and organizations on best practices for K-12 schools. Campus Directors will be sharing any such changes directly with their campus communities. Like any leading educational institution, we constantly reflect on our program and how it is serving our students, making modifications to help our students reach their full potential through growth and engagement.
What happens next with the PAIS Accreditation?
A team of sixteen educators from across Pennsylvania visited Moravian Academy over three days at the beginning of April. At the end of the third day, the chair of the team held a zoom session with our community to share the initial “draft” high level commendations and recommendations that will be in the final report. The team gave Moravian Academy high praise and indicated how impressed they were with our school. Their report was sent on to the PAIS Commission for Accreditation who will review it, make a determination, and send the final report to the school in June. There were no significant issues during the school’s accreditation process, and the school is expected to receive an unconditional re-accreditation for the next ten years. The school’s leadership team will review the report in full this summer and create a plan to address any of its recommendations. Most of the recommendations we expect to be in the final report were already areas that our own faculty and administration identified as areas of growth for the school, therefore some work is already underway in these areas. In fact, some of the recommendations are also consistent with themes that have been identified as focus areas for the school’s strategic plan.
What is happening with Strategic Planning?
A strategic planning executive committee of 17 individuals has been meeting monthly since February to collaborate in the creation of the school’s next strategic plan. Committee members are:
In April, each committee member co-chaired one of six design teams that involved over 100 individuals from our community. They collaborated to explore key themes that had surfaced through our internal all-community survey and focus groups, or through an external threat/opportunity analysis. The six themes are:
The work of the design teams will be brought together to inform the school’s strategic plan. The committee will meet two more times before the end of the school year and the Board of Trustees will review and finalize the plan early in the fall. The initial plan will likely be fairly high level. The detailed initiatives will be developed by the administration and faculty, and where possible we will engage students and families to inform the details of these initiatives.
An early indication of the power of the accreditation and strategic planning work taking place contemporaneously is the consistency that is surfacing around key priorities for our school from various constituencies. Such consistency in the alignment around priorities provides clear direction for our future.
Once the final plan is approved by the Board of Trustees, it will be shared with the community this fall.
What’s the latest with the school’s branding work and how are decisions getting made about school colors and traditions?
You may recall that in addition to the work for which we engaged Crane + Peters, a Culture Committee has been meeting throughout the year to review, discuss, and make recommendations including but not limited to school events, traditions, colors, school songs, and logos. The committee membership included:
The Culture Committee has been meeting throughout the current school year and will be presenting a recommendation to the administration prior to the end of the year. The administration will review, consult with others as needed, then share the plans with the community.
While the Culture Committee has been meeting, Crane + Peters has been engaged in a robust effort to support the school to develop new branding and messaging that reflects the values of the community. C+P even attended Culture Committee meetings to learn from their discussions. C+P will be making recommendations to the administration as well prior to the end of the year. The administration will review, consult with others as needed, then share the plans with the community. To create a unified identity that reflects our shared mission, vision, and values and aids in building a sense of belonging among our community, we anticipate rolling out new branding and messaging in the 2023-2024 school year.
What happened with finalizing the school’s Core Values and Portrait of a Learner for each campus?
Last summer, at a Board of Trustees retreat, there was a recognition that the school had adopted new mission and vision statements, but the school’s core values had never been defined. It was determined that this was a necessary step for us as it serves as the underpinning for both the mission and vision, and frankly all that we do at Moravian Academy. To discern these values, we started by surveying our employees to identify a short list of values that were important to the community. We narrowed the list to 11 and included these 11 in the all-community survey that was launched in November. From that exercise, six core values were identified. There was great consistency in the responses.
Community was #1 for parents, faculty and administrators; #2 for students; and #3 for alumni
#1 core value among students was Creativity!
The other values listed below rose to the top across constituencies.
Community
Creativity
Curiosity
Excellence
Integrity
Perseverance
The core values above were presented to the community at the January 2023 State of the School address. These have not been “rolled out” in any other way as several initiatives were being undertaken in parallel that should support and reinforce each other. Including the core values as part of this process made sense. Additionally, it provides the school time to ensure that these are the right core values to guide us both now and in the future as we complete the work of the PAIS accreditation, the Culture Committee, the work with Crane + Peters on branding and messaging, and our strategic plan.
Another initiative following the merger was to create Portraits of a Learner for each campus. In meetings of the senior leadership team last summer, it was determined that rather than three portraits of a learner, there should really be ONE Portrait of a Graduate. The senior leadership team reviewed the work that had been done on each campus to define their Portrait of a Learner and looked for skills and competencies that were similar across the three campuses. They also reviewed the 2018 work that had been done at Moravian pre-merger related to identifying the school’s “mission skills.” There was a realization that there was a fair amount of alignment between these mission skills, the core values, and portrait of a learner competencies. This work brought us to the idea that some of the words could be captured as core values and some could be captured in the Portrait of a Graduate.
Excellent work and progress has been made toward a goal of reaching alignment behind the core values and Portrait of a Graduate. Ultimately, the senior leadership team made the decision to take a pause from this work and not rush to completion so that the good work that is underway with the Culture Committee, Crane + Peters, and Strategic Planning could advance in tandem. The sense from the senior leadership team was that these combined efforts would provide further insight to us to help provide clearer direction and alignment for the Core Values and Portrait of a Graduate. This work will be revisited over the summer.
If there is a single “Portrait of a Graduate” rather than campus-specific “Portraits of a Learner” how will each campus be able to maintain its unique identity?
While there may be a single Portrait of a Graduate that articulates the key skills and competencies we want all Moravian Academy students to master by the time they complete their studies at our school, the approach to which we ensure students master those competencies will look different depending on the curricular and co-curricular programs on each campus. For example, the chapel programs on the Downtown and Merle-Smith campuses are one way that we foster empathy and understanding, while at Swain similar topics of conversation might take place in town hall or advisory meetings.