Good progress being made on strategic plan
– District Administrator Jason Gorst One of the many things that our school district has done well throughout its history is plan with the future in mind. As we move forward with the 2024-2025 school year, we wanted to continue that tradition. The decision was made to enter into a strategic planning initiative to formalize and continue that process. This year we are partnering with Nexus to lead us through a strategic planning process that will result in creating five-year goals and objectives for the school district.
The process started this summer when I met with Dr. Claire Martin and her team to discuss what we might be looking to get out of the process. We worked to create a strategic planning task force of 30-40 people. Ideally, we wanted less than half of those people to be employees of the school district. We put ads in local papers, on Facebook and sent out information to our parents and staff members. At the end of the process, we wound up with a task force of 46 people, including 18 staff members. While this number was a bit higher than we anticipated, we did not want to say no to anyone, so all who wanted to be included in the task force were invited to be a part of planning the future of the School District of Spencer. We wanted a diverse group of perspectives and we have certainly achieved that.
I have been working with the educational action team of 18 people to plan for our task force meetings. On Sept. 16, we held our first task force meeting in the evening. The group met for just under three hours. They worked as six teams to discuss and gather information about several topics. The first question the group was asked to reflect on was, what are the great things going on in our school? The second question was about the biggest challenges our district is facing. The third and final question of the evening was about what program, activity and/or facility changes are needed to ensure future student achievement and district success.
Currently, we are in the process of putting all of the information we gathered from those discussions into categories. Then, our next task will be to prioritize those categories so we understand what is truly important to our school and community. From there we will work to create five-year goals and objectives for the school district. The areas we may set goals in include, but are not limited to, student learning, staff retention/recruitment/development, community engagement, facility management and fiscal sustainability.
We are extremely excited about the number and variety of voices at the table. I am grateful that our community has taken such a strong interest in the future planning of our school district. The task force will meet in both October and November and we hope to finalize our plan with school board approval in December.
Benefits of a strategic plan – Develop strategies to address the district’s future challenges.
– Provide future educational direction for the school district.
– Determine the school district’s priorities for the short and long term.
– Establish a measurable plan.
– Allocate resources and prioritize spending to maintain public trust.
– Anticipate long-term opportunities, barriers and threats.
– Promote and establish long-term district stability.
– Bond the school district and its community of stakeholders to create a future-focused vision built on shared priorities, values and collaborative decision-making. Purpose of the strategic planning task force – Provide community feedback. – Help identify and prioritize strategic directions.
– Contribute, participate and share as active members of the school community.
