Dana Hall Case

Dana Hall Case

Introduction

The article on “Dana Hall: Funding a Mission” is about an all girls' school which started in 1881. Since then, the school is committed to serve as a girls' boarding school with best educational standards. The school owns 55 acre of land and serves 9-12 grades for boarding and day students and 6-8 grades for day students only. The school is rich in land but it has not insulated itself in any way from potential financial shocks that might arise at times as school is already cash poor. Currently, the school is compared with other all girls' boarding schools in Boston area.

Action Research Paradigm Protocol

Diagnosing the Problem

The problem reflected in the case “Dana Hall case: Funding the mission” is that it went through many turbulent times due to which it was unable to stabilize the school situation. These problems include the issues of long term leadership survival and inability to maintain the enrollment of students at constant rate. The School suffers from the first problem due to rifts among the stakeholders of the school while second problem arises as the girls' population reaching the secondary school levels opted for the private and co-education schools.

Situation Analysis

The current situation that relates to the above mentioned problems for Dana School is the re-application process challenge. This process occurs after every 10 years in which the school is accredited from a private organization. In this process, the school needs to submit a mission statement that depicts the current strategy of school.

The School follows a participatory research process for formulating the mission statement in order to include the suggestions and views of all stakeholders such as parents, alumnae, school staff and educational associations (Ridgeway and Erickson, 2000). However, in current year only board of trustees was included in crafting ...