School district approves new strategic plan

By Kim McDarison

The School District of Fort Atkinson Board of Education Thursday approved a new strategic plan.

District Superintendent of Schools Rob Abbott said the new plan, which he described as months in the making, sets challenging and aggressive goals for the district. The plan will be launched with staff at the district’s convocation, scheduled for Aug. 26.  

Aided by a slide presentation, Abbott said, over the past several months, the district involved “hundreds of stakeholders,” including staff members and administrators, who were tapped for their “opinions, thoughts and ideas.” 

The district’s former plan was retired last summer, Abbott said, and was built using a “5 Bold Step Strategic Plan” approach, which focused on developing specific areas to improve or enhance as identified by the community. He noted that within that structure, some groups were “heavily connected” while others were not. 

The new plan, he said, is designed as a results-focused strategic plan, which comes with a new mission and vision statement to drive and guide the district’s work. The plan defines beliefs and guiding principles to ground the district’s work, and gives “everyone a home in the plan,” he said, further defining the concept by saying, “we’re all in together.” The plan would amplify the district’s distinction throughout the community, region and state, he added. 

The effort to create a new strategic plan was launched last summer, he said, adding: “We started in February and we reported back to you (the board) last in June.” 

Abbott said multiple steps were employed to complete a process to develop the plan. The process looked at five areas, defined as reground, reflect and imagine, define, design, and embark. 

“After this evening, we hope to embark on the work of the plan as it sets forth for us beginning this school year,” he said. 

Abbott outlined the district’s guiding principals which include: academic accountability, federal and state accountability, fiscal responsibility, physical and technical safety, community and stakeholder engagement, and investment in physical and human capital. 

Under the heading of district beliefs, he outlined the following: teaching and learning, social-emotional learning, community and lifelong learning, and leveraging resources for student success. 

Said Abbott: “We talked in June about a vision statement of ‘why’ or ‘where is it we’re going? What is it that we might have as a destination someday?’ and then our mission statement: ‘What and how — what is it we are doing each and every day?’” 

The vision, he said, was: “achieving distinction in all we do, encompassing everyone, in all things that fall under the umbrella of the 1FORT motto as well as the School District of Fort Atkinson.”  

The district’s mission, which, he said, would be read at the beginning of each staff meeting, is built to engage kids and staff to work together to cultivate an inclusive, high-performance culture of growth and community.

As part of the plan, Abbott presented three goals that the district would adopt. They are: 

• High performance: All schools, as well as the district, will achieve a state of Wisconsin accountability rating of “Significantly Exceeds Expectations,” as determined by the state report card, published annually for all districts by the Department of Public Instruction. The rating set by the goal is the highest of the five possible ratings awarded by the state. The goal is set to be achieved no later than the 2025-2026 report card with evidence of annual growth. (An understanding of the state report card and its rating system is presented here: https://dpi.wi.gov/accountability/report-cards.) 

• Inclusive culture of growth: The district’s learning community will exemplify an inclusive culture of growth responsive to our learner and community needs. 

• Community distinction: The district will be the preferred educational option in the region as evidenced by annual growth in the pupil count and open enrollment. 

Further defining the first goal of high performance, Abbott said: “This goal fits the definition of rigor; this goal is a stretch for us. It’s definitely a five-year goal, but it definitely fits the bill when it comes to: Why are we doing what we’re doing? it’s toward greater success for all of our learners.

“This is not about a single test score,” he continued. The state school report card encompasses many different areas, he said, adding: “It does include achievement, or test scores to some extent, but it also accounts for individual student growth; it actually creates metrics for us so we can see all of our 2,600-plus students showing growth in their learning.”

Abbott defined the state report card as “the number one tool” used by districts when making comparisons between themselves and other districts, as well as by potential newcomers to the community who might be making comparisons between districts into which they might place their children. 

Further defining the goal, he said: “This is about incremental, deliberate, very carefully orchestrated growth over a long period of time. This puts all six of our school buildings, as well as our district, on the same path of looking for success.” 

Addressing the third goal of community distinction, he said: “I think we’ve been very transparent that we don’t have as many kids as we would like. In part, we have fewer young families with young children in our community as a whole, but we also have some increased competition. We have families that are leaving to go to other educational options.”

Among options, Abbott said, some parents found success using virtual options and were looking, moving forward, for additional virtual options elsewhere, and fewer students are entering the district through open enrollment.   

“All of those things we can analyze, but we also know the job for us is to turn that around and to make sure that through our quality programming, and our excellent staff, and our excellent teaching and learning, that we really become the school district that no one can turn away from.”  

Board of Education President Mark Chaney asked: “Have we ever seen Significantly Exceeds in all of our schools before?” 

Abbott responded by saying, “no.” 

“We definitely have had some buildings that have significantly exceeded in the past, we’ve had some that have not seen that rating in the past, but we’ve never had an occasion in the district where all six of the schools were significantly exceeding,” he said. 

Abbott noted that it would have been easier had the goal been set at a rating of “Exceeds” rather than “Significantly Exceeds,” but, he said, “that would be like encouraging your kid to get a ‘C,’ so we need to shoot big here.  

“I think the community knows it, they deserve it, and they want it. And we’re going to be really transparent about what we are seeing with results. And if we’re not seeing the results we want, we will be really transparent about what we’re adjusting to start nurturing the results that we want to see.”  

While Abbott described the goal as “a challenge,” Chaney said he believed the board had shown in the past and will continue to show support for the administration. He described the goals as outlined in the new plan as “exciting.” 

Other board members echoed his sentiment. 

A story enumerating steps taken to develop the district’s strategic plan is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/school-board-hears-process-to-develop-new-strategic-plan/. 

A video of the full meeting can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi8RLs1Pb_Q.