#SchoolPR Insights Blog

You have big plans for the upcoming school year. Maybe you want to change the curriculum, add a new program, expand the school building or nurture a more positive community culture. Every end result starts with a good plan, and every good plan starts with a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis involves assessing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats behind what you want to accomplish. This guide will demonstrate how to apply each step of a SWOT analysis to your own unique goal or vision.

Strengths

Strengths are the core competencies of your school community that you want to develop even further. No matter how much your community excels at something, there’s always room for improvement. Try not to limit yourself by saying, “That’s good enough. We have more pressing concerns to worry about.” Improving your strengths is just as important as improving your weaknesses!

Developing your strengths can pay off in many rewarding ways. One benefit is it can give your school a competitive edge against others in the area. The more you work on those strengths, the more they will stand out, and the more they will contribute to a strong brand identity. This in turn helps foster a community that people want to be a part of for the long haul.

To build upon your strengths, start by identifying what exactly they are. Create a list with your team so that everyone is on the same page. Perhaps your school excels at securing funds for facility renovations and new programs. Or, your school is known for having a strong network of alumni who give their time and career expertise to current students. Whatever your strengths are, brainstorm ways to set the bar higher and make them even stronger in the upcoming school year.

Weaknesses

As you might have guessed, weaknesses are obstacles that make it difficult to achieve your goals. In the pursuit of a goal, these weaknesses can seem to crop up out of nowhere, causing plans to not go as expected. The benefit to conducting a SWOT analysis is you get a chance to anticipate potential weaknesses and plan around them. This makes your team more equipped to reach their goals and bring those visions to life.

For example, your goal might be to pass a referendum in the upcoming academic year. Your school has tried to pass that referendum before, but came up short on votes year after year. Identify challenges from previous campaigns, then problem solve to ensure those challenges don’t get in the way again.

Weaknesses could also be areas of school life that have received less attention. Whether it’s a program, foundation, school facility or community culture, schools typically have one thing or another that’s been placed on the back burner. A SWOT analysis gives you the opportunity to identify the weaknesses that can be transformed into strengths.

For instance, your school might have a shortage of staff in the special education program. In this case, your goal would be to provide special education students with the support they need by advertising open jobs, creating new roles, offering employee benefits and so on.

Opportunities

Within the context of a school district, opportunities are potential partnerships you can leverage to achieve a goal. There are many possibilities for community partnerships, including ones with local businesses, municipal governments, law enforcement, nonprofit groups and corporations that can offer hands-on learning experiences. There might be partnerships you have yet to explore, or partnerships your school has underutilized in the past. Identify your goal and the external opportunities that can help you achieve it.

It’s important to remind yourself and the team that you don’t have to do everything alone. There are many resources at your disposal—possibly even more than you think. Combining forces with local partners can help you achieve so much more than you would on your own. If you reach out to groups in the community, you’ll be amazed how many people want to support your school’s vision.

Let’s take a look at a common scenario. For the upcoming school year, your goal might be to enhance public health and safety on school grounds. To achieve this goal, you might ask local law enforcement to give presentations about bike safety, substance misuse or how to report misconduct. Representatives from your regional health system could also teach students how to prevent the spread of illness. Use subject matter experts in the community to your advantage!

Threats

The “threat” component of SWOT isn’t as scary as it sounds. A threat simply refers to external forces in the community that might act as barriers to reaching your goal. They could be established groups of people, such as a committee or corporation, or they can be situational factors, such as a law that’s been put in place or limited space for expanding school facilities.

Similar to weaknesses, identifying and planning for these threats can help you avoid unexpected obstacles later down the line. When threats are brought to light, your team is able to come up with a more efficient plan that lets you reach goals or checkpoints within the desired timeframe. Identifying threats also makes you more aware of what you can’t control, and as a result, you’re able to focus on the things you can control. This ensures you’re allocating your time and energy in productive ways.

Let’s say your school is planning to build a new sports complex. There’s a plot of land next to the school campus that would serve as a great place for this new structure. However, when you look into attaining construction permits, you discover the zoning for that plot of land doesn’t allow for school buildings. In this case, the threat to your goal is the zoning laws that surround your school’s campus. By identifying this threat ahead of time, you can explore alternative ways to achieve your goal.

Tips for involving your community

At the end of the day, everything you do is meant to serve your school community. With that in mind, it’s important to seek community feedback in the pursuit of a goal or vision. Below are some strategies your team can use to help students, staff, families and community members participate in the planning process:

• Distribute surveys: Surveys allow you to gauge your audience’s thoughts on a school plan before setting it in motion. That way, you can adjust the plan as necessary based on their feedback.
• Conduct focus groups: After gathering data from surveys, invite audience members to participate in a series of focus groups. In addition to forming face-to-face connections, your audience gets an opportunity to elaborate on their survey responses.
• Share your plans: Transparency is key when you include the community on important decisions. Keep your audience informed every step of the way by posting regular updates, inviting the public to meetings and releasing board minutes and agendas.

Use SWOT to achieve your school’s vision

Proper planning leads to a higher level of success. To make your vision a reality, start by running your strategic plan through a SWOT analysis. This will help you identify the school’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities for partnerships and external threats that might stand in the way. Evaluate your school’s plans now, so you can see those plans come to fruition later.