The Manitowoc Public School District is planning for the future.
The school board heard the first draft of a strategic vision last night (May 27th), created by MPSD department heads and Superintendent Lee Thennes.
The vision includes seven strategies, or “big rocks,” and Thennes calls them that the district wants to do over the next three to five years.
The topics include student achievement, district leadership, school culture and student well-being, communication and engagement, fiscal responsibility, attractive recruiting and hiring, and operations and infrastructure.
The school board talked a lot about student achievement, which includes a discussion about PLCs or Professional Learning Communities.
Director of Educational Programs Heidi Schroderus told the board that they want to make sure all school staff are on board.
“That is what we’ve been missing a lot,” she explained. “Principals to be able to observe PLC and give them the feedback to get them to that next phase.”
Board Member Mary Lofy Blahnik says she wants to see more long-range plans for the district as part of fiscal responsibility.
“A 30-year plan for facilities isn’t unusual for districts,” she stated. “Another project requires a 10-year plan, and it was hard for the community to understand. They kept asking, ‘What is the plan?’ And it’s hard when it hasn’t been built in the past for us to say, here it is.”
Board members also asked district staff how they will be able to tell them how the projects are progressing, including Ann Holsen.
Holsen asked, “So where we are getting the data from, is it, our exit for retention, is it our exit interviews. What are the trends? Those are the things that keep coming up in my head as I’m reading, that I would like to see in the 100-day plans. How do we know that our changes are working?
The strategic vision could be approved at the district’s next regular school board meeting on June 10th.
You can find the full details of each “big rock” on the agenda page of manitowocpublicschools.org.
