Visioning for the Future: What Can Educational Leaders Do to Build a Shared Commitment to Interagency Collaboration?

Abstract

Interagency collaboration is being touted as a means for schools to address the increasing social, emotional and health care needs of students. In this article, we contend that if interagency collaboration is to become more than a buzzword, then school leaders must work diligently to build a shared commitment to the school's vision by engaging service providers in sustained and collective discussions and decisions about the school's direction. Two promising approaches for building this shared commitment—strategic planning and collaborative visioning—are highlighted, including a discussion of how several newly-formed collaboratives are confronting the cultural, procedural/regulatory, and personal barriers that prohibit meaningful interagency collaboration.