Once you have your vision and mission statements in place, you have a picture of where you want to go. The next step is to understand where you are now. This is the process of taking stock and involves thorough examining of both the internal status of your district or school and the external context in which it is situated. 

Conduct an Environmental Scan

An environmental scan is conducted to collect data to answer questions about the present and future of the school district.

• Your environmental scan develops a common perception.
• Your environmental scan identifies strengths, weaknesses, trends and conditions.
• Your environmental scan draws on internal and external information.
• Your environmental scan is a key on-going process for internal and external honesty and openness to changing conditions.

Tools for Environmental Scanning

There are many approaches to environmental scanning, including:

• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Focus Groups
• Open Forums

Several of these are discussed in detail in the Community Involvement module.

In this Module:

In the Toolkit: