Initiative Strengthens Strategic Planning at Catholic Schools

Catholic schools that lack the time, expertise or financial resources to develop comprehensive strategic plans are getting help through Marquette University’s Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative.

The initiative has provided strategic-planning assistance to 18 Wisconsin Catholic schools since the 2025-26 academic year, including 14 in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Launched in 2024 under the direction of Dr. Dan Scholz, the initiative partners Marquette with Catholic schools and parishes to strengthen leadership and provide professional development.

“Every year, we’ve got maybe 10 or 12 schools that have asked about strategic planning,” Scholz said, “but they didn’t have the bandwidth to deliver on that.”

The initiative has now also infused longtime Catholic educational leadership to help provide greater strategic planning.

“I put together an advisory council of leaders from Marquette University and the Archdiocese [to] do brainstorming on the needs. Are there things, programming that we can help with?” Scholz said.

Scholz engaged longtime educational leaders like Mark Joerres and Dan Quesnell, who each have at least a quarter-century shepherding Catholic schools in southeastern Wisconsin, to facilitate strategic planning for Catholic elementary, middle and high schools, all done through private donations.

“If any one of these elementary schools went out to hire a firm to do their strategic plan, they may or may not be Catholic. They may or may not know the Milwaukee archdiocese,” Scholz said.

“We thought, ‘Let’s have our veteran principals and presidents who’ve done strategic planning themselves lead the process.’”

Their plans take advantage of the National Catholic Education Association’s National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools and focus on four main strategic areas: Catholic identity, academic excellence, operational vitality, and leadership and governance.

Scholz said that this year, they’re taking new steps with 10 partnering schools to go beyond the nine-month strategic planning journey.

“What we’re doing this year with those 10 schools is a fall workshop where we talk [about] best practices for implementing strategic plans,” Scholz said. “We want to not only put together strategic plans for these schools, most of which never had a strategic plan before, but then most importantly, [discover how] you operationalize it.”

The planning process incorporates data and feedback from stakeholders throughout the school community. Plans can include new mission, vision and values statements as well as specific objectives, implementation responsibilities, benchmarks and milestones.

Strategic planning is one component of the Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative. Marquette also offers professional-development programs aimed at preparing educators for leadership positions, including its Aspiring Leaders and Elementary Principals certificate programs.

The programs address areas ranging from emotional intelligence and conflict management to project management and financial literacy — skills Scholz said teachers may not have needed before moving into administrative roles.

“Almost always the number one issue is financial literacy, just to understand how to run a $1 million nonprofit,” he said.

Teachers who could be candidates for principal or other leadership roles certainly have experience in conflict resolution with children, but often they may have never faced particular conversations and conflicts that their higher-level strategic counterparts regularly experience.

“This is programming that the principals, presidents, and [Superintendent] Ed Foy and the leaders of the Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee are asking for,” Dr. Scholz said.

Archdiocese schools working on strategic planning with the Marquette University Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative: