On a wintry evening earlier this year, Avonworth School District, home to approximately 2,000 students in Allegheny County, hosted a graduation party. It included the typical pomp — clusters of balloons in school colors, streamers, graduation caps — but the circumstance was wholly unusual. This party feted the class of 2035, an experimental kick-off to a new strategic planning process that engaged students, staff, educators and community members in an exercise to think creatively about the future of learning in the district.
“What I really wanted to avoid in strategic planning was going through a vanilla process to create some vanilla goals,” says Dr. Jeff Hadley, superintendent of Avonworth School District. The boundary-bending concept of the grad party, Hadley surmised, “would push people out of their comfort zone and give them the message that we want to think bigger and bolder about the future.”
Avonworth’s leadership team sought input from as many stakeholders as possible, prioritizing community engagement to drive the district’s direction. Avoiding a closed-door approach, the “grad party was open to the whole community,” Hadley explains, drawing in nearly 100 diverse guests. Like schools across the region, Avonworth recognizes the rapidly shifting landscape of communities, technology, and the workforce that its students will soon join.
“We’ve all heard the saying — ‘things are changing faster than ever,’ but we’re never going to be able to predict the future,” Hadley says. Instead of developing static achievement benchmarks that may soon be outdated, the district is focused on equipping students with ample tools to prepare.
At the event, a compelling graduation speaker illuminated for the crowd how school had changed and what learning was like in the future. Five student actors, playing 2035-based character roles, mingled with attendees, showcasing artifacts from 2035. To highlight how school had fundamentally shifted, each student received an award that emphasized characteristics to support whatever came next — community service, communications, citizenship, resilience, and critical thinking.
“This was an enlightening way to bring awareness to the idea of what life could be like in 2035,” says Paxon Masters, a drama student at Avonworth High School who performed at the party.
To guide the strategic planning process, guests were encouraged to capture their hopes and dreams in time capsules that would be ‘transported’ back to 2025, a strategy to collect candid feedback.
Comments ranged from practical to philosophical.
“Internships with local businesses for middle and high school students,” wrote one guest.
“Consider where learning can happen – so many places,” offered another.
“While everything becomes technological, how can people remain human?” questioned a third.
Envisioning life ten years from now, says Hadley, “pushed people to think, ‘what do we need to change to make sure we’re preparing kids to be ready for any point in the future?’”
Along with focus groups, surveys, and other feedback channels, Avonworth used AI to synthesize time capsule contributions from the graduation event. Five goal areas came into focus:
- Academic Excellence
- Future-Ready Learners
- Support & Wellness for All
- School and Community Engagement
- Strategic Alignment
Using these goal areas as a guide, the district’s strategic planning committee set to work, translating key takeaways into measurable actions that will guide Avonworth’s path forward. For example, Portrait of a Graduate, a critical outcome from the 2020 strategic planning cycle, will likely be expanded to include learning benchmarks at different points on the K-12 continuum.
“We need to ensure that we’re building up toward that Portrait,” Hadley says. Student electives will become more responsive, helping students discern career paths through purposeful content exploration and mastery. A completed plan is expected in September 2025.
“School has to change,” Hadley says. “I don’t want kids in their senior year sitting around, waiting to graduate. I want them diving into their potential future and figuring that out.”
With clarity of vision, Avonworth can begin delivering more inherently personalized experiences for each student.
Authored by: Erin Kane