Use the SMART Goal format to create goals that make the planning process easier to complete. Your needs assessment may uncover many issues that could affect how students feel about the climate in the school. Discussion with your team can help you narrow your planning to one or two focused goals. Although tempting, having more than one goal for your team’s first project may spread your resources too thin to accomplish anything substantial. 

If your goal is to improve the percentage of students who feel safe in your school, your SMART goal may read:

After implementing Program X, on a student survey completed by all students at the end of each semester, the percentage of students who report feeling safe at school will increase by 10%.

Develop both short-term (a semester) and long-term (an academic year) resources.

WHAT’S NEXT: Using needs assessment data, team members write a SMART goal for their activities to improve climate and safety. This goal will be written at the top of every meeting agenda to remind the team of where they are headed. Click here for a template that can help the team organize creating a SMART goal. Click here for an example SMART goal worksheet. After identifying your main goal, click on Step #3 for strategies to meet the goal.

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