By Kim McDarison
The School District of Fort Atkinson Board of Education on Thursday received an update on a process that will create a new strategic plan for the district.
The plan potentially could be in place for a five-year period.
District Administrator Rob Abbott said the process to create the plan would begin this month and likely finish in June. A launch of the new strategic plan is scheduled for the beginning of the next school year.
The last strategic plan was retired earlier in the school year in anticipation of developing a successor, Abbott said.
Abbott described the current school year — with the coronavirus pandemic prompting distance learning — as one of “evolution,” noting that the new process will develop a plan that fits the district’s “current needs.”
“The time is right” for the development of a new plan, he said.
Aided by a slide presentation, Abbott said the district will be moving forward from its former “5 Bold Steps” plan, taking time to celebrate the district’s advancements, while understanding its needs and areas of growth. The process will include “embracing disruptive innovation,” while further “engaging in (a) process to look forward” and “moving to a results-based vision.”
The plan will be built on the foundation of two pillars, he said: “Student learning in ELA (English Language Arts) and Math,” stressing a “strong core,” and developed through achievement, which he defined by asking “What is it our kids know?” as well as growth, which he defined by asking “Where is it that our kids are going, and what is that trajectory?”
A second pillar is “excellence in programming,” which is developed through “comprehensive programming,” he said.
Within his presentation, Abbott outlined five “steps to success,” enumerating them as “reground,” defined as “What is important to our 1Fort team and community?”, scheduled for development between now and March; “reflect and reimagine,” defined as “Who are we? Who do we want to be?”, scheduled for development between April and June; “define,” a step he defined by asking “What are we aiming for?”, scheduled for development in June; “design,” defined by asking “How do we get there?”, scheduled for development in July and August; and “embark,” defined as “our journey begins …”
Looking more closely at activities within each step, Abbott said, in February and March, the district would facilitate staff and community engagement to determine district beliefs and guiding principals. The board would next draft those believes and principles into a document that would be shared with staff, families, and community members for feedback. The final step would be a finalization of those beliefs and principles.
From April to June, discussions would shift to the district’s mission and vision statements. A document would again be drafted by the board, shared with the district’s stakeholders for feedback, and then finalized and adopted by the board of education.
By June, Abbott said, the process would focus on goal setting, which would include a comprehensive data review. The board and administration, he said, would work together to draft the plan’s goals and measures of success.
Abbott said the process would include a presentation of data to the board, while asking for its input in defining baseline data. He noted that the exercise looks to answer the question: “From what point is it that we are looking to grow forward?”
Within this phase, the process also would look to determine the plan’s length and identify success indicators.
“This is where we would be setting a very specific results-based measure for the district,” Abbott said.
“Our results’ measure is something our community should know; our staff should know, with a very clear idea of where is it that we’re heading in the future,” he added.
Over the summer months of July and August, he said, state data will be released, giving data teams within the district and individual school buildings more metrics and “learning data” to analyze.
“The administration and other building-related subcommittees will have action plans and yearly benchmarks under that results-driven goal … these are the actual plans for the steps, these are the increments that buildings in our district will take to continue working toward that larger goal, and then the administrative team makes a recommendation to set those incremental goals for the following school year,” Abbott said.
Meeting long-range goals likely could require a five-year plan, Abbott said. However, he added that depending on metrics, goals and achievement indicators, goals could be met in shorter or longer timeframes.
The new strategic plan likely would be launched at the beginning of the new school year.
“I feel pretty strongly that that is the appropriate time to launch a new strategic plan,” Abbott said.
“Admittedly, this is a much different process than we’ve used before,” he said, adding that he was excited about having the full spectrum of district stakeholders “really take a look at our vision, really take a look at our mission, really take a look at our data, really give some thought as to where is it we think we can set as a rigorous, yet attainable goal in the future.”
He stressed that, using this model, success is built on two pillars, adding: “It’s not just about a single test score; it’s not just about any one measure. It’s definitely about what our students are achieving — if they’re learning and showing us that they are learning; it’s definitely about individual student growth: are our kids moving in the right direction over time?”
Further, he said, “it’s about excellence in programming.
“Our district and our past and present boards have had a huge commitment to whole child education, and that will not wane in this plan,” he said.
Looking at an overall goal of the plan, he asked: “How is it that we make the School District of Fort Atkinson the destination that we want to continue to grow, and we want other people to see no other choice but to join us here in Fort Atkinson?”
After the presentation, school board President Mark Chaney said, “I think this board is in a good position to be able to communicate things that the community has expressed to us that probably wouldn’t have come up if we hadn’t survived, so far, a pandemic. I think we have a unique circumstance there, but I also feel like our youth and our relative “un-entrenched-ness,” if you would say, is going to really work in our favors as having few attachments to any specific idea. We’re more malleable, but we know what we need to do, but we are open to how we do that.”
He said clear and results-based communication with the board from all of the district’s stakeholders would be required to bring about a complete result.
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