Strategic Thinking

In January and February 2026, Head of School Susanna Waters is hosting a series of Fireside Chats. These sessions offer a space for families, faculty, staff, and trustees to reflect on Fay’s progress under the 2025 Strategic Plan (below), which has guided the School since its launch in July 2022.

This year, Fay embarks on the development of our next strategic plan. Partnering with Tim Fish of Two Chairs Studio, our community–including trustees, administrators, faculty, and staff–will engage in a collaborative process to celebrate our milestones and identify areas for future growth. This work will culminate in a formal plan that will be voted on by Fay’s Board of Trustees in May 2027.

We look forward to sharing updates on this process in the coming months!

Fay School’s 2025 Strategic Plan was approved by the Board of Trustees at its annual spring meeting in May 2022. The plan identifies five areas of focus as the School continues to grow and evolve to meet the needs of its students: School Community, Campus Planning, Environmental Sustainability, Alumni Engagement, and Financial Sustainability.

 

As with the previous plan, the 2025 Strategic Plan is designed to ensure that Fay School will continue to realize its single, most important goal: to provide students with the foundation for a meaningful life. While the Plan is a road map for our ongoing improvement, it continues to honor the guiding principle established by founder Eliza Burnett Fay in 1866—“to lay a foundation for education in its broadest sense.” As we embrace our history and uphold the traditions established by our nineteenth-century founders, we are keenly aware that the best way to fulfill our mission in the 21st century is to continue to evolve in a thoughtful and deliberate way.

Strategies

• Implement a comprehensive plan to broaden diversity, ensure equality of opportunity, and cultivate a sense of belonging that informs goals and allocation of resources for:
     - Educational program
     - Student life
• Further develop programs and activities grounded in Fay’s values that
     - Promote cultural competence

Objective: Undertake continuous preservation, renovation, and development of the School’s campus, facilities, and infrastructure to sustain institutional excellence

Strategies

• Update the campus master plan
     - Review the existing master plan, identify new campus projects, and revise cost estimates
     - Assess funding opportunities
     - Create a prioritized schedule of projects

• Create a facilities risk management plan
     - Identify issues not addressed in the regular facilities maintenance budget that may occur at some future date

Strategy

• Implement a school-wide environmental sustainability plan
     - Determine goals for campus, facilities, and the educational program

Strategy

• Establish a formal structure for alumni communications and activities to achieve:

Strategies

• Conduct a thorough assessment of tuition/pricing • Increase non-tuition revenue
     - Assess the viability of expanding the Early Learning Center
     - Determine the scope of international summer and school-year partnerships
     - Explore new sources of ancillary income