Dear Sage Hill Community,

With great excitement and pride, we share with you Sage Hill School’s Strategic Plan for 2020-2027. This new plan coincides with our 20th Anniversary, a fitting time to look toward the future while also reflecting on the past. Today’s educational landscape looks quite different than it did back in 2000 when Sage Hill first opened its doors. Entering our third decade, our mission remains unchanged, but our world is dramatically different, with technological and educational innovations we couldn’t have imagined. That is why we’ve crafted new strategic plans every 5–7 years since the inception of our School. And why we credit our founders, administrators and Trustees with stewarding us on a path to success beyond our expectations.

There is a key difference between this Strategic Plan and those that preceded it: In the past, our strategic plans addressed what we “had to” do—build a campus, grow our student body, establish our reputation. This year, for the first time, our strategic planning process focused on what we “get to” do. We get to fulfill our mission in creative and compassionate ways. By growing our financial aid endowment, we get to serve the broader Orange County community. We get to focus on the student experience, with programs that develop our students’ Core Competencies (the Six Cs) and take a deep dive into creating a community that prioritizes wellness. We get to recruit dynamic, innovative faculty and staff, and retain them with a workplace that supports their creativity and professional development. Sage Hill is in an enviable position.

As luck would have it, the crafting of this Strategic Plan coincided with our periodic reaccreditation process with the California Association of Independent Schools. That process included our own surveys and discussions with all constituencies—current students and alumni, parents, Trustees, Trustees Emeriti, faculty, staff, and others—and meetings with an outside consultant to ensure that all voices were heard. This thorough analysis provided invaluable insight on our programs, processes, and culture—exactly the insight needed to establish our goals for the future. (As a side note, we also received our CAIS accreditation for the maximum seven-year term.)

Our founders were audacious in their vision and ambitious in their pursuit of our mission. We remain equally ambitious today in launching the next phase of Sage Hill School and securing its future with this Strategic Plan.

Mike Bolen

Chair, Board of Trustees

Patricia Merz

Head of School