Abstract
Pine Crest School is a Fort Lauderdale, FL-based school offering educational services for Pre-K, Kindergarten, Lower School, Middle School and Upper School students. The school offers a broad range of academic, extracurricular and community activities for enrolled students. In an attempt to appraise her commitment, Pine Crest School's Mission Statement and Vision Statement are analyzed. Textual, content and search engine analyses are performed in order to appraise school's pronounced statements against the actual implementation on the school's official website. Further, Pine Crest School's 2014-2019 Strategic Vision and Recommendations, school's de facto Vision Statement, is discussed. Pine Crest School's main areas of strategic focus are: (1) Faculty Recruitment and Retention, (2) Student Enrollment and Affordability, (3) Learning Beyond Traditional Classroom and (4) Facilities Supporting 21st Century Learning. The paper concludes by highlighting effective components in Pine Crest School's Mission Statement and Vision Statement and offers proposed changes and recommendations. Future follow-up review of Pine Crest School's website is required for a more extended analysis of school's practices.
Introduction
Organizations adopt mission and vision statements for different purposes. The justifications for using mission and/or vision statements – whether in physical space at an organization's premises or, increasingly, online – are as different as each organization's specific objectives. If anything, most common justifications for a mission and/or vision statement include communicating core values and ethos for stakeholders (internal and external), corporate branding or accreditation (for educational organizations). The actual enactment – as opposed to idealized representation – of corporate values, if anything, remains a common issue for organizations opting for explicit mission and/or vision statements on the corporate website. For current purposes, one educational organization is discussed namely, Pine Crest School (http://www.pinecrest.edu/). The school, located in Fort Lauderdale, FL, provides academic offerings for Pre-K, Kindergarten, Lower School, Middle School and Upper School phases. In pursuing her academic mission, Pine Crest School expresses on her official website (http://www.pinecrest.edu/) her Mission Statement and, less explicitly, her Vision Statement. The enactment of both statements needs to be further explored in order to produce a judgment of whether each, one or another or neither statements are effective and, more significantly, whether each, one or another or neither statements are up to delivered promise. This paper aims, hence, to analyze Mission Statement and Vision Statement of Pine Crest School in order to appraise school's strategy against both statements and propose changes, if any, for strategic propositions stated in both.
Pine Crest School: Mission & Vision Analysis
The Mission Statement of Pine Crest School, according to school's website, is
The above statement emphasizes the key components in the current educational ecosystem: (1) academic rigor, (2) excellence in arts and athletics, (3) leadership and (4) collaboration. The growing competition in the current job market – requiring more education, higher degrees and, not least, a broader skill portfolio – is reflected in Pine Crest School's four key components. By qualifying students for a more demanding, or "challenging", future, Pine Crest School is committed to offer cutting-edge education for enrolled students. This commitment is manifest by multiple means.
First, Pine Crest School places her Mission Statement on her Home Page. In so doing, school's board indicates how significant school's stated mission goals. This positioning is, moreover, aligned to recommendations of content focus and accessibility as part of managing an organization's online reputation (Chun & Davies, 2001).
Second, Pine Crest School manages to develop a strong identity by focusing extracurricular activities, particularly arts and athletics, in addition to a rigorous academic curriculum. This is, in fact, a characteristic of high performing organizations (Williams, 2008). The enactment of strong identity, from a content perspective, is effectively executed on the school's website. Notably, Pine Crest School uses "arts" and "athletics" frequently as is shown by performing a search analysis for both keywords. Taxonomization of sections reflects, moreover, school's commitment to arts and athletics as both integral to the school's mission. Specifically, upper main menus include – in addition to "About Us," "Admission," "Academics," "Giving," and "Summer" – "Athletics" and "Arts". Not least, the Pine Crest School website offers a rich visual content, fundamentally photos, featuring different extracurricular activities students, of all grades, participate in during school year and summer.
Third, collaborative learning is effectively implemented in Pine Crest School and is aligned to school's 2014-2019 Strategy ("Pine Crest School," n.d.). Specifically, by offering well-equipped facilities (for learning and extracurricular activity purposes), emphasizing groupwork during art and athletic events and, not least, by connecting students to a broader community (by enabling acts of giving highlighted by a dedicated section "Giving") – Pine Crest School maintains a promise of building character and leadership capabilities stated in the school's Mission Statement.
The Vision Statement is, however, less explicit and is not positioned in a visible location on the school's website. Embedded into school's strategic plan over 2014-2019, Pine Crest School's strategic plan emphasizes school's mission by preparing students for a more global, tech-oriented and fluid society ("Pine Crest School"). The strategic plan is, moreover, aimed at enforcing school's institutional identity by continuing to invest in academic excellence, arts and athletics and character leadership ("Pine Crest School").
The most specific areas of Pine Crest School's (unstated) Vision Statement are expressed in four areas of strategic focus: (1) Faculty Recruitment and Retention, (2) Student Enrollment and Affordability, (3) Learning Beyond Traditional Classroom and (4) Facilities Supporting 21st Century Learning ("Pine Crest School"). In specifying, explicit, future directions, Pine Crest School's (unstated) Vision Statement reflects characteristics of more effective vision statements (Kantabutra & Avery, 2010). On flipside, in not offering up a clearly stated Vision Statement, Pine Crest School risks losing strategic focus in long range as short- and medium-range demands override strategic goals under day-to-day and/or emergency operational pressures.
Proposed Changes & Recommendations
Notwithstanding comprehensiveness and well-positioning of Pine Crest School's Mission Statement, more focus should be placed on internal ethos (as opposed to strong identity. The internal stakeholders, i.e. faculty and staff, should be included, explicitly, in the school's Mission Statement. This should ensure both external and internal stakeholders are properly addressed.
The school board should, moreover, ensure a clear Vision Statement is present and well positioned on the school's website. True, structured and properly focused strategic goals are pronounced in the school's strategic plan. However, an explicit Vision Statement is apt to not only maintain a focus on school's strategic goals, but also, more significantly, guide future long range plans.
Conclusion
Pine Crest School's Mission Statement and Vision Statement reflect school's commitment to students, parents and broader community. By emphasizing rigorous academics, extracurricular activities (particularly arts and athletics) and collaboration, Pine Crest School represents, via her Mission Statement and Vision Statement a forward-looking, community-oriented and, not least, an innovative learning hub.
Further, Pine Crest School's website needs to be further enhanced by content, particularly visual content, in order to enhance user experience and, not least, to drive in more traffic for more prospective students (a strategy usually adopted by college and university websites, particularly in featuring campus Virtual Tours). This feature is, if anything, integral to both Mission Statement and Vision Statement since, as stated in Vision Statement, one primary goal of Pine Crest School is to prepare students for a more challenging, digitally-oriented future. This should be supported by more interactive features including, for example, online feedback forms and live chat features. The growing investments in web platforms by educational institutions has become a norm as more and more students, existing and prospective, head for the school's website for news, registration, enrolment, academic and athletic opportunities and interaction. The pronounced messages in Mission Statement and Vision Statement should be enacted in full on- and offline.
References
Chun, R., & Davies, G. (2001). E-reputation: The role of mission and vision statements in positioning strategy. The Journal of Brand Management, 8(4), 315-333. Ingenta Connect. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540031
Kantabutra, S., & Avery, G. C. (2010). The power of vision: statements that resonate. Journal of Business Strategy, 31(1), 37 – 45. Emerald Insight. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02756661011012769
Pine Crest School. (n.d.). 2014-2019 Strategic Vision and Recommendations. Pine Crest School. Retrieved from https://mediafiles01.myschoolcdn.com/ftpimages/112/misc/misc_129636.pdf
Williams, L. S. (2008). The Mission Statement: A Corporate Reporting Tool With a Past, Present, and Future. International Journal of Business Communication, 46(2), 94-119. Sage Journals. doi: 10.1177/0021943607313989
