Why Create a Strategic Plan?

By almost all standards our district is considered to be excellent and our children are receiving a wonderful, well-rounded education.  However, we know that if we are to continue that level of success over the years to come, we must always be willing to look at ourselves and be open to growing and changing when necessary.  We are working to create a Strategic Plan that will help us set up systems for continual self-assessment as well as incorporating educational ‘best practices’ in guiding our decisions and practices as a learning community.  We want this Strategic Plan to be our roadmap for continuous improvement.

How is the Strategic Plan being created?

We retained the services of Perry Soldwedel of the Consortium for Educational Change (CEC) to help lead us in this process.  CEC is a non-profit group of educators who are expert on educational excellence and best practices.  They asked us to form a committee of 40 ‘stakeholders’ in our school (parents, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals/aides, Board of Ed and community members) to represent all members of our learning community and ensure that everyone’s ideas are heard and considered in this process.  The people on this Strategic Planning committee agreed to spend 4 full days in retreats which are dedicated to assessing ourselves as a learning community, learning about the current best practices for schools, and creating a Strategic Plan for our school.

Where are we in the process?

2 of the 4 meetings have already taken place, and the final two are scheduled for February 25th and March 17th.  At the meeting on February 25th we will identify our long range goals, the measures by which we will evaluate ourselves, and our strategies for maximizing our resources and achieving excellence.   All of this will be summarized in a one-page plan and the final review and adjustments to that plan will be made at the March 17th retreat.

The next page contains a summary of the ‘Emerging Themes’ the committee has created at the halfway point in this process.  These are the 5 main priorities the committee has identified as key components of our Strategic Plan.  More detail on these Emerging Themes as well as background information on the best practice ideas that were used in generating them are available on our district website.