Dear Hudson Montessori School community,

This the final in a series of communications about our school's Strategic Plan leading up our State of the School meeting next Thursday, February 7, 2019 at HMS.  These communications highlight work occurring within each strategic imperative. Taken together, this work will ensure that the school is moving towards its vision consistent with our values and mission.

As review, the Board of Trustees adopted a Strategic Plan last spring.  Illustrated by the image below, the Strategic Plan reaffirms our school's mission, declares our values, establishes a vision, and outlines important strategic imperatives.

This update will explore two initiatives:  broadening the HMS impact and ensuring financial sustainability. 

First, we will explore work to broaden the HMS impact. This work is focused on three areas.  A brief overview of these areas and a sample of some of the steps we are taking in each follows below:

1. Effectively share HMS with new families/parents who are seeking a transformational educational experience for their child.  Our school continues its focus on inbound marketing as a method to reach potential families.  We continue to refine our efforts to reach parents with younger children, our primary source of new students.  We are also focused on developing new content to connect with parents of elementary/middle school students who may be unaware of Hudson Montessori School.  In addition to inbound marketing, we are expanding opportunities to provide or sponsor children's focused activities that can also introduce our school to those in the community. 
2. Nurture relationships with current and past families, students and alumni to continue to build a strong HMS community.  Through initiatives like the Pumpkin Patch, Family Dance (coming up!) and the Holiday Drop and Shop, the HMS Family Network is connecting families to each other and to HMS.
3. Pursue opportunities to expand the HMS footprint and provide an exceptional education to more children.  This year, we have expanded our Parent-Toddler program offerings during the week and added a summer session and class on Saturdays in January and February.  Additionally,  the school is now offering a Parent-Infant program.  This program started in January.  Finally, the Board and administration are also in the early stages of exploring other opportunities to expand our footprint including a potential infant and/or toddler program.  

Turning towards ensuring financial sustainability, work is being conducted to analyze HMS' full financial picture with an eye toward achieving optimal fiscal health.  Primary to this work is enrollment that ensures financial health and sustainability.  Specifically, in this area, we are:

1. Prudently managing expenses with existing and future programs to ensure short- and long-term sustainability.  At next week's, State of the School, the Board of Trustees and I will share tuition information for 2019-2020. This will reflect our effort to preserve and improve our program while being conscious of the costs to our families.  We will also share ways that we have responded to feedback from our parent community regarding the cost of our school.
2. Cultivating donors and foundations to assist in supporting HMS.  We are proud of reaching nearly 100% parent-participation in the Hudson Montessori Fund in 2018-2019.  Additionally, HMS is renewing relationships with foundations that have supported our school in the past and sharing our Strategic Plan for potential new partnerships.

As I close out this series of emails, it seems important to again focus on the impact that our program has on each child in our community.   Our collective work is designed to help our children become lifelong, curious learners, courageous and compassionate leaders and students of humanity.  Recently, we hosted a panel conversation of past HMS parents and students as part of an Open House in our Middle School.  The alumni who attended are out of college or just about to graduate.  They shared that their time at HMS was the most "real word" of their educational experiences.  That was a very profound observation about what we do at HMS.  And on Thursday night, Dr. Lisa Damour, a New York Times bestselling author on issues impacting our youth and someone with knowledge of the best schools in the country, shared that Montessori schools like ours were unique in the way that they provide children with a furthering and supportive learning environment.  We have much to be proud of at Hudson Montessori School and much to be excited about for the future.

To review past communications about the Strategic Plan, visit the Strategic Plan page on our website.

If I may answer any questions about this email or have feedback on how we can continue to improve our engagement with you on our strategic plan progress, feel free to email me at mvirgil@hudsonmontessori.org or call me at 330-342-7236.

Sincerely,

Matt Virgil