FAYETTEVILLE -- Ten teams of volunteers are wrapping up their work to map out a proposal to guide the Fayetteville School District for the next five years.
The plan, once approved by the School Board, will describe how the district will achieve a mission of ensuring "all students are successful in a highly competitive and rapidly changing global society."
The district's focus for the past several years has been on implementing new academic standards and preparing for a new statewide standardized testing system, Superintendent Paul Hewitt said. He thinks it is now time to give attention to the overall education program and how the district operates and works, he said.
The Cambrian Group, an educational planning firm in Montgomery, Ala., trained instructional facilitator Holly Smith and teacher Shay Hopper in an organizational planning model the district is following to develop a five-year strategic plan.
Hopper thinks the development of such a plan will improve communication in the school district and increase community involvement in the schools.
"It's given us time to really look at our system and evaluate where we are and where we're going to go," she said. "It's given us the vehicle to determine how we're going to continue to evolve."
About 200 volunteers are participating in the initiative, including educators, business owners, parents and community members.
"The district is being driven by the people who really want to be involved in change and improvement," Hewitt said. "I love that participation. It will have total support because of that rigor people put throughout the process."
The 10 teams have been meeting since January to research and brainstorm ideas. Each has been assigned to one of 10 strategies and is writing an action plan, Smith said.
The action plans will include specific, measurable achievements tied to the assigned strategy. Each achievement will be accompanied by a series of steps for the district to follow to reach the achievement, Smith said.
Each action plan that becomes part of the five-year plan will be assigned to a district staff member for implementation.
An April 6 meeting of one of the teams drew about 15 members, who sat at round tables inside the Washington Elementary School library.
Students were gone for the day, and the lights were dimmed to make it easier to see a document displayed on a big screen.
Katie Stueart, a co-leader of the team with Mignonne Scarbrough, pulled up pages showing each achievement and corresponding steps onto the screen, giving team members time to check grammar, word choice and the content for each statement.
Stueart, who teaches 11th-grade Advanced Placement English at the high school, said she anticipates her team members will propose about six action plans to meet their goal of increasing diversity in challenging courses, including in the Advanced Placement program.
A conversation commenced about whether to propose a requirement that all newly hired middle, junior high and high school teachers receive training on techniques to teach either pre-Advanced Placement or Advanced Placement classes. They agreed to keep the recommendation.
"This gives everybody a platform to share their ideas," Stueart said of the planning process. "It gives a lot more people a voice."
Metro on 04/24/2016