Sue Flicop

After attending and participating in both Strategic Planning presentations, I’m interested in the diversity of opinion about setting priorities among the 12 initiatives. About half of the initiatives were focused on what and how we teach, and include interdisciplinary learning, differentiated learning, technology and media use, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), etc. I didn’t see an overwhelming consensus in this area, though many put an emphasis on “educating the whole child,” which means including the arts, music, etc. in addition to other aspects of a traditional curriculum, as well as STEM and interdisciplinary learning.

I did see that every group felt some priority should be put on the teaching staff—either in hiring top quality professionals, in retaining them, or in giving them time to collaborate. Many felt that those all went together, but disagreed on which one would lead to the others. For example, I heard people say that if we focused on retaining top quality teachers, we would also attract top quality teachers as they hear that we value their work and provide a good environment in which to teach. Others felt that hiring the best teachers would automatically create a better environment and the collaboration would inevitably happen.

Many participants commented on some missing pieces, primarily regarding the financial situation of the schools (i.e. how can we make these initiatives happen without extra money?) and the school-parent connection (i.e. what can/should parents do to support this work at home?).  These are areas we can address to improve the Strategic Plan.

It was fascinating to hear all the different ways of prioritizing…the arguments were very persuasive and passionate. On the Strategic Planning Team, we did a similar exercise and noted all the connections between the different initiatives—this was also true for the many small groups who participated.