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by Tom Coombe
After three sessions and numerous small group conversations, the Ely School District’s strategic plan is coming together.
School board members will gather Monday with a consultant to review a draft of the plan, which evolved from three two-hour sessions, including one Wednesday, involving a roughly 25-member group.
After first identifying strengths, challenges and future hopes, the group honed in this week on mission and vision statements and core values for the district.
The plan is expected to serve as a roadmap as school board members make future decisions regarding the district.
“I will have a draft plan for the board to look at,” said Gail Gillman, who facilitated the sessions and heads strategic planning for the Minnesota School Board Association. “It will really be in draft form, but it’s going to be in that plan on a page format so they can start making decisions and move toward a resolution adopting the plan.”
Gillman hailed the group for their work, which included boiling down numerous ideas and topics into a more concise list of objectives, values and statements about the district.
Board chair Rochelle Sjoberg called the sessions productive while Kristi Marshall, who works as an early childhood teacher and is a parent of school-aged children and recent graduates, said she was impressed with how the group pared down from expansive ideas and concepts to the resulting plan.
In a series of exercises Wednesday, the group worked to whittle eight potential mission statements to one that will serve as the lone mission statement.
One that got support from two of the four subgroups read “Fostering academic excellence and respectful students who thrive, lean and lead with integrity.”
Another subgroup worked to combine the wording of that statement with statements that also identified the district as one with a “positive safe environment” and one in which the district “empowers students to achieve academic excellence, contribute to the community and thrive in an inclusive environment.”
Also gaining support was the statement “Our mission is to empower each student to learn, discover their possibilities and thrive,” and one that reads “The mission of the Ely Public Schools is to empower students to thrive academically in an inclusive environment.”
Earlier, the group identified four “core values for the district.” Those are:
• Safety/safety and security/safe inclusive school;
• Academic excellence/excellence in education/quality education with academic rigor;
• Fiscal responsibility/district financial viability;
• Caring, positive and supportive environment.
Next, the group worked to reduce a list of 25 belief statements, offered earlier in the process by various participants, to four.
Those getting the most support were:
• We believe in inspiring students to become active, engaged members of our community, empowering them to contribute positively to society;
• We believe that every student deserves access to a high-quality education that inspires curiosity, fosters critical thinking and prepares them for a successful future;
• We believe in providing a safe, inclusive environment where every student feels secure, supported and valued;
• We believe in fostering academic excellence in a safe, inclusive environment for all students;
• We believe in being good stewards of public financing and revenue sources.
The final exercise centered on selection of a vision statement, which Gillman compared to a concise statement that might appear on a billboard.
Those drawing the most support were:
• Small schools with big opportunities;
• Preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s opportunities;
• World-class education, small-town feel.
In conjunction with the work of the larger group, superintendent Anne Oelke has led a “writing team” of school staff that has come up with goals based on what has been identified in the previous meetings.
Those have included overall goals in focus areas including:
• Student growth, achievement and support;
• Staff growth, achievement and support;
• Promote community and family engagement;
• Finance and facilities.
A string of potential priorities were identified, including a goal of implementing flexible schedules to increase students’ academic and explorative course opportunities, and bringing elementary and secondary students together to create a supportive school community.
Other goals included efforts to help staff members become certified to teach college credit courses, in an effort to combat student defections to Vermilion Community College, and to consistently review curriculum.
Other goals related to marketing and representing the district in a positive way, increasing districtwide communication, maintain safe and viable school facilities and remaining fiscally responsible to stay an independent school district.
In conjunction with each goal, specific objectives are being identified to support and move toward those goals.
Gillman called the plan a five-year roadmap for the district.
