Women sitting and having a meeting.

This month, members of the Strategic Plan Guiding Coalition will wrap up empathy interviews conducted with a variety of community members. During this phase, students, staff and families have shared their feelings, needs, aspirations, and experiences in the Bellevue School District.

Now, Coalition members will use their interview notes to identify key quotes from participants about their goals, wishes, insights and perspectives. The quotes will be grouped to determine themes that help identify needs in our community. The Coalition will use the themes and needs to develop problem statements.

The goal is to land on one problem statement that will be used as a prompt to generate priorities and strategies in the next phase.


Flare and Focus

This is a process of flaring and focusing. Empathy interviews broaden understanding (flare) of different perspectives and experiences within our learning community. Focus centers on a single problem statement and flares out again to explore possible priorities and strategies.

During the month of February, the Coalition will continue to develop the problem statement. In March, they will begin drafting priorities to share with the larger BSD learning community.

Follow along with the Strategic Plan design process.


The Bellevue School District acknowledges that we learn, work, live and gather on the Indigenous Land of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Duwamish and Snoqualmie Tribes. We thank these caretakers of this land, who have lived and continue to live here, since time immemorial.