Dear Friends,

The best schools are constantly looking ahead, planning for the future no matter how great the successes of the past. At Lake Forest Country Day School, our last cycle of strategic planning six years ago led to the splendid new and renovated facilities we enjoy today. In 2007, our foucus on the future continues. After many months of effort, we are pleased to share the results of a new Strategic Plan that was approved by the Board of Trustees at its June meeting.

The process was thorough and inclusive. We assembled an 18 person Strategic Planning Steering Committee made up of parents, trustees and members of our faculty and staff. The Committee worked through one weekend and spent countless hours thereafter in electronic and face-to-face conversation, receiving valuable feedback from the community along the way. The task before them was challenging, but our committee members went about their work with great skill, demonstrating at every turn a willingness to think and dream ambitiously.

Consensus soon built around several themes we agreed were necessary to deal with a rapidly changing world, including the importance of ensuring the strength of our educational program, culitvating a broad-based student body, recruiting and retaining the best teachers, and assuring the financial stability that will allow us to support our goals. These themes are developed more fully in the sidebar links to the right, and we hope you will consider them with the same care with which they were crafted.

As with the 2001 plan, we are determined that this new Strategic Plan not gather dust on the shelf. We are already deep into the process of bringing these words to life, to make real our lofty ambitions. In the years to come, we will measure ourselves against the specific implementation steps enumerated in the Plan. If successful, and we intend to be, we believe that LFCDS will be able to sustain its role as one of the best elementary schools in the nation. Today's students at Lake Forest Country Day School, as well as future generations, deserve nothing less.

Michael E. Robinson        Alexander D. Stuart '64
Head of School                President
                                        Board of Trustees