001our discussion items we have two discussion items tonight starting with the 2021-2026 strategic plan the adoption of the 2021-2026 plan was laid due to the pandemic but is now the plan includes five strategic initiatives that will meet the expansion in support of programming for students in our community our package contains a mental i want to thank you for your continued support and support of the district we have an incredible administrative team our employees are great the community is great it really is it just makes everything possible as a district thank you um strategic plan so i'm going to take over the screen and do some background this is for discussion tonight so back in 2014 we created a previous strategic plan it was actually framed as a creator as a framework and the way it
002operated is there were six strategic initiatives or directions and anything we did any new initiative had to fall within two three or four of them forward is how it was structured so that framework served as our plan that has guided us up through 2020 right now everything is ready to shut down um we've and this one it had out of the uh the goals which are on we've listed the goals in the board packet but the goals were strengthening human capacity through the design and delivery of high quality learning opportunities for students that have parents and community both inside outside the classroom walls this led to a lot of training a lot of community outreach community learning we used to be at the time we were doing parent workshops we were doing community book readings
003etc so it was that concept redesigning our educational program to focus on students capacity to think creatively solve problems analyze synthesize and navigate information that was the starting point of moving to the health it was the early iterations of trying to work through that process and then increasing organizational capacity improved system effectiveness we had a lot of streamlining to do and cleaning up some processes so that we could spend we were always good with our money we wanted to make sure whatever we spent it was focused on instruction and we wanted to make sure that we cleaned up processes and this led to creating really strong hr processes changing in the technology department we had a lot of technology but it was we were running with two or three people we really eased up how
004we run technology our coaching models it really changed our organizational effectiveness monitoring and evaluating existing learning spaces and ability to support learning needs if you look at our learning spaces compared to what they look like in 2014 they look drastically creating personalized learning opportunities for students that involve advanced programming for students i'll talk about that in a little bit not creating a robust early childhood program for dcs residents one of the things that we've seen out of here is we set a goal and then we received the jenkins donation and we were able to expand prior to that we're in two or three classrooms total and through each other they were usually three or four-year-olds then we ran some playgrounds we now have this whole program that we and we serve six week old babies
005all the way up through the time they start kindergarten it has become unintentionally one of the best recruiting and retention tools for staff for k-12 staff because we give our staff that we hire a discount to be able to enroll their children and they can take them right across the street which has actually turned into a great draw for young teachers that are maybe in another district who are paying child care costs or can't find child care and to be able to do it right where they work is it's really helpful and they don't feel like they have to move to dexter they can still be part of dexter but close enough which is great for our staff um one of the other goals was establish strategic partnerships local domestic internationals that support student learning
006and increased capacity for us to provide learning opportunities for students and staff so we have out of this plan we've had multiple international exchanges we've had students go to germany france china we've had students come here we've set up some really unique international programming we've been able to increase access for kids up until the pandemic now we have to revisit how we're going to do this um fostering an internal culture growth mindset so we if you had throughout those years you would hear growth mindset over and over and over the idea was that we could continue to evolve and grow as individuals so out of this plan we expanded early childhood over with jenkins and at this building we [Music] transitioned this entire campus if you think about what it looked like it continues to
007go through iterations but if you can think about what it looked like in even 2017 so since 2017 we built beacon elementary and attached it to anchor we built those flex spaces in the middle which were directly part of this planet to create innovative learning spaces we put flexible furniture in all of our schools and as you've gone on tours of the buildings our furniture is extremely flexible bees were actually part of a pilot that they were deciding we were determined too big for the classroom so we repurposed them but we did instead of ordering furniture in every room for these we piloted we went through a purposeful process to pick the best furniture for each age level and to learn from our each other on what worked we built the siriani building which is
008now housing alternative education and it houses it's the hub for deer and middle class we actually have kids that move from the high school over there throughout the day and just need a little different setting for a couple hours we put it strategically close enough yet and separate we changed the traffic flow across the campus if you look at pedestrians and vehicles so the roundabouts significant difference on traffic if you think about how we used to be stalled at shield road and trying to turn onto baker it's awful and then so with the roundabouts we [Music] so we had during this plan and put in what's coinfronter island um over here on baker because it just reminds you of another log but the issue with it is cars would run over it all the time
009so we've got the rapid flashing we worked with the city to get two crossings on dan hoey at logical places to be able to actually cross the street and then to move over near kensington over on dexter ann arbor she could cross the street so we made it so our kids could move around the campus and you see it to this day now you can see we used to be panicking when creepside kids were trying to walk the bus up now it's a regular stream we have crossing guard there we have flashing beacon it's just part of how we operate we built the twin turf fields at the high school we had serious space issues so we built the biggest most flexible space we could it is it's got lines for soccer field hockey girls
010lacrosse boys across different dimensions uh football it has baseball and softball tick marks and it has band tick marks we can do anything on that five and a half acres of turf with lights we constructed the cloud fields across the street so the local little league and our softball program and i think our softball program this year is finally going to be able to host a tournament or two they're so excited when they run practices instead of trying to work off one field there and then two that we're always under water over here we raised it up four feet sloped in different so the infields are generally pretty dry and they can run their practices with batting cages and multiple fields it's great we have a middle school softball team program starting up we're able
011to really run the program we always could but this is way more efficient and then we created the flexible learning spaces at anchor and beacon which are absolutely phenomenal you can see the picture there we have one at wiley that is shared between the wiley classrooms and the dread box so we move the dread bods into the back garage area so that in the evening they can use the flex space we use this hard floor so they have room to be able to work in the room and they can roll the robots out there and drive on it um we have creek side we have the innovation room there where it's like 40 foot of drop dry erase wall it's similar to that wall but way bigger multiple projectors invitable tables that pull the nest
012we can fit 65 people in there uh we at mill creek we built four rooms off the back as much rooms one we're using for player but the other was a full flex room with partition walls like clothes they're writable furniture's flexible it's the one upstairs requires is probably the best view of the entire district it's phenomenal so then we created programming to increase the graduation rate including alternative ed and the graduation coach system that we put in place where we have every school has students that aren't necessarily have an iep or on any kind of case load where they have an adult that's really trying to help them academically and they're kind of in this place where something happens in their life or they just need a voice and they need someone to order
013between being their personal coach kind of the one that stalker someone that's constantly following him and going hey i need you to turn that in um and just staying with them but developing a relationship with students in the family that carries over multiple years and eliminating barriers for these students to be successful everything from finding gas parts to help jobs to we've had some of the early graduation coaches we had to help them get a birth certificate and a social security number and cards so that they can actually get a job where we can help them help themselves and help their families so we put this graduation coach program in place we're able to help case manage 25 kids or something here it's made a huge difference for kids we have a very low rate
014with maybe one or two that we have not been successful with in their four-year period we still don't give up on that's been significant and then the dexter early middle college creation so we are finally at the point that we get to expand it out and we'll have the first group of fifth year they're washing our students next year which is exciting that'll be our first cohort and then we'll be expanding it from there we created personalized learning options throughout the district with clinical apex and summit options we have uh families through the middle school we've worked with spark and we're working on in the youngest grade it's kind of this uh a sprinkle of spark a down horsepower or an app or sorry a shower spark or an actually depending on which classrooms are
015so innovation throughout the district so we expand our place-based learning partnerships with everything from bridge projects to all the we sent our article making waves last week that listed a whole bunch of different place-based opportunities which is taking advantage of our location and assets in the community so that is really meaningful for kids um one-to-one technology when this plan was adopted for our creative bank in 2014 we were just starting at 15 to put ipads and k2 to the program now we have boy am i happy we have technology in the last two years but it was it was a challenge and we were able to scale it up and we had to build a digital ecosystem to sustain it so our system is set up that can handle two or three devices per individual
016interview because people don't show up with one-to-one devices they have a phone they have a tablet they have a computer they all want to get on the network and we have redundancy we have additional uh systems so that the county-wide fiber goes down we can still keep phones alive through a separate system we've built in the infrastructure so we can function innovative instructional practices throughout the district we're doing some incredible things continue to push and grow and then remember the emu explorers camp for sixth graders it was so cool we were able to do that um which increased student achievement across all grade levels we created this two-way international program and one of the coolest ones we sent kids to china for spring break several years ago they didn't really they they paid for the
017flight i think and then we've had a german exchange we've done several years that we put a pause on because of the pandemic but it'll start back up where students generally about ninth graders they host students from uh from aventinous gynazio housing for about a week and then they visit and are hosted with those students for a week the cost is really the airfare and what a great opportunity it's a very similar community in school and it's tied with biker chemicals just moving into saline harbor area um and we're able to we've had we had a french exchange going we had i know our uh orchestra with italy they've done some other other churches but we've been able to create some truly international experiences throughout the pandemic we had kids from multiple countries studying with
018our kids last year online we're doing we're doing what we're going to do is we'll do we have at any given point 20 to 30 international students at the high school and if we're going to run an international baccalaureate program it is impossible to run a world and a global mindedness program without talking to people but it's really ideal to be able to have that interaction we've been able to create this program um we have uh our mental health and social emotional learning supports have been expanded throughout the district we're going to continue to expand the challenge that we have that all school districts are trying to work through is work with the community groups and with the hospitals and say okay what is each each entity's role are we screeners or are we service
019providers where where do we go and where do we stop so that is what is going on around the country it's just trying to figure out in our 1098 hours trying to teach reading man science social studies english developing social emotional skills but what is our role and that's what we've been building supports to try to support until we get to clinical needs and then try to help them out in clinical life everything's getting pinched there's just not enough places to go and then uh we've expanded reading and math interventions for students um so when i first came we had like one and a half people i think in elementary or staff significantly more now in different roles so we have coaches we have um as brianna trucking heather green's role is really building that
020bridge with families if we're going to try to intervene with with kids it can't happen just during school day there are times that parents with little kids are meeting with their kids there's simple strategies that will help reinforce skills um math-wise in fifth through eighth grade we're working on acceleration this year in pacing so kids that could go a little quicker or they need a little help we're working on how to pace it different for them so that we know that we have kids that could continue to go forward if we build the system so denise dutcher is left in the classroom for the year and is working through that process and nobody ever is doing the same thing over at mill creek and working together to try to make sure that we can help
021kids work on their pacing so that was what the last strategic plan yielded so now where we are is in 2018 we knew this plan was going to expire and it was time to build a new plan the goal was really having done by 2020 we we were getting there um so in 2018 we partnered with knowledge works which is a national non-profit and we had them come in and they did they came in and they held focus groups with stakeholders so they held parent focus groups student focused groups staff focus groups they did classroom visits through every building they walked through classrooms everywhere and these what the challenge that schools and every organization always has you you walk through your own buildings all the time you're like yeah it looks great but you need
022someone from outside to look at it with a critical eye so we actually hired people to come in with a critical eye to visit schools all over the country so they came in they did their classroom visits and then they held a series of surveys they built what was called the opportunity analysis report so they told us some of the areas that they saw where we had some issues where were strength where our strengths were and where areas we had to improve that were truly opportunities it wasn't a it wasn't a deficit-minded approach it was these you have a lot of pieces in place here but you're not quite there if you do these things you're there so they came in they created this opportunity analysis we then ran um we had ran several feedback
023sessions so we did community feedback we did teacher feedback groups and we did leadership feedback we broke through that opportunity analysis these initiatives one of the big ones that stood out was the vision statement of champion learning develop education inspired their way to the words nobody knew what it meant so that was that's something when you're in the organization you have a sense but when you have someone from the outside go and ask about specific questions um nor what their role is in that network so we then work through several iterations of groups we probably had i think i i started ballparking and counting we probably had at least 70 individual reviews it may have been over 100 but i stopped counting at 70 on the little charts that i was keeping before the pandemic
024and we continue to work through so what we ended up with in the end is we went through this process where we would um we knew we needed to re-energize the shared vision we needed to collect data and do some analysis we need to prioritize and determine strategic initiatives design goals we need an action plan but in every step we have to move back with stakeholder involvement i'll talk about how we use that process when i go over the learning continuum to show you how this took shape so the plan the draft right now and what i would recommend is i have uh it's no longer 2021 so we probably need to update that here and we might want to just say this through 27 so in five years it took three years to get
025this far hopefully this is not another pandemic um so through this process we've identified five strategic initiatives so the first one is that the dexter schools community will work together to develop educate and inspire students for an ever-changing world that's the vision work that will foster a culture of connectedness by focusing on social emotional needs and building trusting relationships throughout all levels of the learning community this is our internal culture we'll transform instructional practices to support social emotional learning life skills and content that provide our students with flexible pathways for learning we'll enhance the learning environment for all students by providing educational experiences within and beyond the classroom will stand for justice and equity by promoting meaningful and sustainable actions to create an inclusive learning and working environment that embraces diversity of ideas experiences and
026voices so when we look they fall under five key areas there's vision culture learning continuum extended learning and diversity equity and inclusion so vision our strategic initiative would be working together to develop educate inspire students for an ever-changing world so we need to develop unified collaborative and supportive teams internally and externally the vision what we found is through this process is first we had to unpack what development what educate went what inspired and when we did it we found that we were able to engage we did i remember the postcard but we ended up with through some deep process we had to identify and find our alumni so we tracked down 10 000 next year and we were able to identify how to contact alumni we were then we internally we asked uh we asked
027our staff we asked our kids we asked our parents and we asked what characteristics knowledge and skills do our students need when they graduate to be successful we then sent out the same question to our alumni and our entire community we did an exchange and we were able to kind of flush out that it was these nine competencies that continue to come up and at the same time we were working with a group through ed leader 21 which is a national uh national group that was coaching schools on how to identify graduate characteristics that every school would aim for that fit their community and we were working on it and they happened to kind of meld together so we created what we call the help which is this wheel and under develop we have defined
028develop as collaboration critical or creative and critical thinking and communication that's what we're trying to develop for students educate information literacy content knowledge which is what we generally only focus on and the one of the highest rated areas from all of our groups externally our parents our alumni etc was financial literacy which is an area in traditional school instruction is not really covered so we identified and educate we really need financial literacy too and then inspire what we define that by is kindness and empathy personal responsibility and resilience and initiative so we were able to unpack in terms of the vision now the role is we need to develop these unified collaborative supportive teams and help every level of the organization understand their role in what it means to develop educate inspire including at the
029board level what does that mean so then in terms of culture our strategic initiative is to foster a culture of connectedness by focusing on social emotional needs building trusting relationships throughout all levels of the learning community and as the school district will build build trusting relationship and connectedness through our learning community and daily practices i have to tell you this has been one of the biggest challenges through a pandemic trying to work in this environment and develop connectedness and culture is a major challenge and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel where we can start to pull people together and have conversations that aren't in 140 to 200 characters they're not in some email or in a social media setting they're actually people talking in person and connecting and we're really excited to
030get working on this area internally and external because if there's any sign in our entire country we need to work on our culture so this is a it's an even more important strategic initiative now than it was when we wrote it two years ago learning continuum so this one i want to pass down copies so the learning continues so the strategic initiative is to transform instructional practices to support social emotional learning life skills and content that provide our students their flexible pathways for learning the goals are that we'll create and implement a p through 12 learning material that defines competencies and social emotional learning life skills and content common language by 2023 and share it with all stakeholders that's your community school the dexter schools community will identify and define instructional strategies that support multiple
031pathways for students to navigate along these strategies will be fully implemented by 2024 we're on pace we're cruising along so what this means if we if you look at the district website on the district website we have a tab order profile on that tab we have a help if you click on the helm does this supposed to be anything we actually had i don't know all right you might have had a word for word weighing out the spinny thing or the anchor and we decided we didn't want any one to spin so so in the box next to there we define exactly what we mean by kindness and effort and then to keep it fully transparent we have the learning continuum same document i just passed out and what we did is we started this
032during the pandemic so in may june july and august of 2020 when part of that we were all locked in our houses we asked our staff who would be willing to help build the develop and the inspired portions of this because we knew it educates a little higher tougher look when you get into the content knowledge because you have so many different content so we asked who would be willing to work on this so we created a zero to eight continuum not a great level zero is preschool one start in kindergarten two three early elementary four and five working early elementary elementary later years into middle school six seven high school eight is ideally graduate and we what collaboration what um creative and critical thinking what communication every one of these competencies looks like at
033each level this continuum because what we know is that kids don't have born on date at exactly a certain year in time they're going to be exactly at the same place in terms of their ability to communicate what we do know is they'll be in a in a range somewhere if they're developing and we're able to help them develop at an appropriate pace and our goal is that level 8 by the time they finish that's what's in that in the helm definition so we worked with our staff to develop a draft we then met with parents and community members and some business people etc and we had them hack it up and they hacked it up and then we sent it back to the groups that spent all this time working on their houses on
034trying to be connected in the most in one of the tougher environments to do it and they looked at it and they had to take the feedback and revise and then we took it back again so that's that cycle constant feedback to revise so last year we were able to start the year with the develop and inspire drafts in pretty good form and last year we had we pulled the research and development group of teachers and administrators out for that semester to develop spark they worked and one of their first tasks was to hammer out the educate portion and try to work through what would that look like because it's pretty technical in terms of okay what does it look like what's it look like for english and then they did a couple iterations with
035external groups and we've been able to create it into this version right now this year we're working on the kindness and empathy part and trying to really roll that out and it's been it we go in spurts there's times it goes well there's times that you know yeah we're gonna do a better job of that that's the learning that's the work and what we know is that as a district a strategic plan is a living breathing document and then the best plans as you're creating the plan you're already putting pieces in motion to actually execute on the plan so that's where we look at learning continuum oh i want to get back the next part is the flexible pathways so i'm going to pass this out i want you to look at the side that
036has the elementary is listed and i'll explain where we're at there's two sides to it go to the site that is preschool at the far left and i don't have this project i don't want everybody watching me but if you look here's what we've created so far on flexible pathways so in preschool through the early grades or anchor beginner we're doing it especially anchor beacon we have these we run these workshops and we run some spark initiatives and we run some place-based work and we have a personalized learning model that they're working through but grade wise it's they're they're still learning some basics we're trying to help kids figure out what they know what they like what their interests are and then when we move into creekside we give kids a choice between clinical and
037science and they don't have to stay in it in whatever they choose for even the whole year they generally ask them to try their big staffing easier and balancing classrooms building culture and trying to build community better but they can move between so we give them options and then when they get to middle school they have the choice between clinical apex design and then when they get to the high school we have alternative education we have advanced placement classes we have the early middle college we have dual enrollment classes we belong to the early college alliance as a county which is an early middle college housed at eastern michigan where students just they go starting in ninth grade they go to eastern for school for high school but it's still back for students but we
038work with students we work with every district and they're coming on it we have international baccalaureate we have sources of courses which are career prep courses and career technical edit where we host graphics at our high school soon we don't even talk about adding a class here that we want to replicate an existing one so it might be a unique process we got to follow because it's a consortium class that we host here we send kids over to chelsea for robotics and health careers over at st joe we send kids to cosmetology which is currently housed in ann arbor um we send kids over to selene for a series of other courses they built the high school they actually built the spaces for them so we work as a collaborative to be able to create
039these courses and then we have wave which is the washington alliance for virtual education which is a it's an online kind of almost like alternative act but it's how in person classes are at ipsy in yfc but then it's a lot online they send a handful of kids there just we give options on the other side though you'll see what's really one of our issues our pinch point is that our options kind of hit a point in ninth grade when we get every ninth grader takes american history or american studies so american history and english nine they take biology they take whatever math class they're in and the delivery model is the class and they take their elections so what we're working on is how to kind of give an option through there and what
040that would look like it's pretty close we're still working with staff we met with a bunch of staff last thursday meeting again on wednesday we're working with that on what they look like to bring something to the board but that's the concept of pathways so we can have kids kind of flow in and out based on their interests or their needs we have sent groups all over the country to look at schools that have different pathway options as a district we're not the first in michigan we're not like but we're not the last um we have one of the models we really like is a model in wisconsin that in kettleberry what happens is kids are part of this micro school in the high school so a fraction of the kids are in this in
041these academies almost in the school that are focused on different career paths they're able to learn at their own pacing and they're able to do external certifications and some unique experiences we think we could create something pretty similar it's just going to take us a little while they're about 10 years ahead of us i think we can catch them they're about 10 years ahead but there are programs like this like we have been to schools all over the country we've been to rural kentucky to go to a district that was about the same number of kids for an entire county and they had a 100 graduation rate and it was rural kentucky and it was amazing what they did without the resources that we have here and to think and some of what we learned
042there we've been able to put in place here we've been the schools in arizona within the schools in california we've been to schools in ohio florida i mean we've been all over looking at schools you know okay how does a flexible pathway work and especially how do you do it at the high school level so that's how we move to this point so then that brings us to the next strategic initiative which is actually i think is the most exciting when we look at what we like to do for kids so it's extended learning opportunities and the initiative is will enhance the learning environment for all students by providing educational experiences within and beyond the classroom this was part of our original our last strategic plan trying to extend outside the classroom walls that's where
043the bridge project came from some of these were like we did the science study the third and fourth graders that was pretty cool so they've got they've had opportunities but we want to take it to scale and the goal would be to establish and implement a system-like plan for all students to experience extended learning opportunities or elos as aligned to the learner profile by september of 2025 and elos are defined down here and i'll pick up three different screen here so extended learning opportunities are opportunities that enable learners to gain knowledge and skills outside of the traditional classroom often community based with partner engagement these flexible opportunities involve include rigorous authentic problem solving and inquiry that connect with learners interests and passions these learning activities can be learner driven designed by the learner and credentialed
044by the teacher so how this works is on the health we have these competencies that kids are trying to meet we also in the educate portion under content we know what equates to algebra one what standards does the kid have to prove that they are able to do in order to show that they know l number one and just an example we have to sit we know english nine what equals english not what do they have to know and be able to do if we look around the community there are opportunities for kids to get an experience it's 15 to 20 hours it's not a full year internship it is a co-created experience that the learner can identify what they're going to prove competent on their competency on and how they're going to do it
045in that setting which gives them a chance to explore so i look at right across from our campus over in the industrial park we have mc3 creates high technology medical equipment they have a clean they have it's incredible you can see the windows from our schools you go back in there we have a robotics company that creates robots and programs robots to be able to build just about everything our kids should have access to 10 or 15 hours of visiting these programs and working with community partners to develop skills that they can demonstrate here instead of only sitting in a class because we know the world doesn't work sitting just in a classroom you learn so much by getting out we have to create a structure to do it we have an opportunity that kids
046could get a certified nursing assistant certification without having to take a two-year-old class to do it it's not that it doesn't take that long we have emts we have kids that could get the lowest level of emt certification and see if that's something they might want to do and if they don't they still can save someone's life one day we have opportunities that we can create that's what we'd like to do right now we're working with um standing tools stanley black and decker over at on here on river and team and we have a couple students doing something some work over there they're trying to help us work the bugs out how to do this it's a couple kids at a time we like to scale this to make it an opportunity for all of
047our kids and when we look as a community we have a couple huge advantages compared to almost anywhere else i've ever seen we're an 84 square mile district all of our schools are on a 360 acre continuous campus all of our kids go to school together their entire career and they may be an anchor or beacon they're still going to the same drop-off but they're in school together their entire career we're like one giant one-room schoolhouse house in a community with assets everywhere you look at the mill creek running through we have some great great assets right in our campus you go downtown you look at metro parks you look at the businesses we have you look at what means and experiences our community has an industry and an education that we can provide what
048we want to do is operationalize that for kids and that's that that's just listed really this one's kind of exciting but this one doesn't happen if you don't do the other three that's the challenge so then the last and not the least important this is extremely important especially given our demographics given where we are as a country so our strategic initiative is we will stand for justice and equity by promoting meaningful and sustainable actions to create an inclusive learning and working effect that embraces diversity of ideas experiences and voices the goal is that will increase cultural competency for all staff and students minimize peer-to-peer discrimination and embrace diversity of ideas experiences voices as measured by evidence of training baseline survey data administered in the spring of 2023-2025 conceptually we have to get to a place
049where people can disagree and still talk about it and we have to set up the environment that our kids can learn in that setting and our community can have that dialogue the goal is to create that opportunity so we can have as a community some real discussions the other challenge we have as a school district is we are just over 96 percent caucasian the world our kids will go into will expect them to be able to navigate multicultural settings and they don't live anymore we're trying to help kids prepare for life if we don't have an environment that looks like the world they're going to work in in a world that's going to assume they already know how so we have to figure out and as of this strategic initiative we have to create an
050environment where we can have that true dialogue and we can help kids create and embrace diversity of ideas and experiences and still know how to work together and we have to do it and we worked through we created the it's took until late summer to get the goal and strategic initiative in the right way now we have to do the work so that's the proposed plan today is just discussion it's big it's it's uh not going to be easy but it really does if you think of where you want your kids to go to school what we want for a community it's pretty it's pretty old we have the means both we have the cognitive ability we have the willpower and we have the resources to actually make this happen but the next step is
051we've got to get to appointment reporting so to give us the efficient build we're already as you see it's a living breathing process we're already in works of a lot of these because as you're creating you can't tell people don't wait till we adopt you can't do anything we have to we just continue to kind of work forward because instructionally it's the direction instruction we want to get to and all five have to happen to make the other ones work and it's not been for anything it's not something where we just sat in a room and wrote it up it has been eating after meeting it polishing after polish i actually went building by building each staff and got their feedback firsthand i mean at a time it was in january in january i think
052about where we're in the omicron rush we actually had to hold school this is the most polished version i can bring thank you very much different parts like i know a couple of you were in some parent meetings at different levels um a couple were in like we met in the creekside innovation room there we had board members that we left there and we had just keep doing versus city well dynamics here let's just shut down and forget about it because you have to keep going a strategic plan can't just be forgotten or shoved to the side because you've got to keep going so very impressive i mean i know to some small extent because that's not enough how much work came in and even when i had that that was a lot i could
053only imagine so thank you guys so much thank you mom that's really impressive she even is the title so molly's job description strategic initiatives i think the focus is an ongoing process of polluting bringing back to something really embraced greatly how successful ago [Music] you to think about looking into is the technology growth and because everything's going tech and there are so many opportunities in the tech world really degrees i work for a tech company previously worked at a big company that had a huge tech department and the world is moving towards hiring people with practical experience certificates training outside of the traditional education to work in cyber security tech support networking it's really a world based on certificates and short training not so much a traditional educational valve and those can be done tech
054companies are almost all virtual now so we don't need to have google in our backyard we've got duo we've got other big tech companies here but those could be tech companies from around the world about internship or educational type opportunities and it's great that you mentioned that because we're in the first semester of working through high school kids that are our student tech squad that conceptually we're trying to create a model for the clo system with a group of kids so we have a class that released during the day to work on technology district but then i'll do some after school hiring but we'd like to figure out how to build this in the smaller iterations for kids and they're part of our thank you for helping us figure this out and to create opportunities
055because if you think about it as a district we have some significant and if we can partner up externally for kids they can learn a lot some incredible things and we're in that process i i'm kicking myself doing whatever i didn't talk about that was one of our first stanley [Music] so we went through interviews set if we weren't saying okay oh i have to decide to go to michigan to study computer science who would be good at this yeah well in the tech space it really is the skilled people in the world through certifications and not so microsoft certifications security certification networking certifications all these certs that if you look on linkedin some of those types of things that we can get while they're still in school and providing our tech support services that
056will give them a leg up and we the board approved a course recently called integrated studies that's our shell to give [Music] focusing on social emotional needs etc and sometimes um you know there's a lot of discussion about whether one is age appropriate you know especially for the younger kids whether they should be you know there's there's a lot of data that shows that when you're writing things out and you're reading on paper versus a screen that different people learn differently and it's somewhere better in that way but i think for younger ages and for everybody and if you're actually handwriting something out you can you know remember a little bit better so there's a lot of value to um having print and to maintaining the different types of learning um and so what sort
057of concerns me is when i hear us you know sometimes and i don't have the survey results in front of me and i don't know i've never seen them but um critical apex and summit in grade seven through eight i know this parents are given a survey i don't know whether you know whether the ones that don't want don't pulse on it their foot can pull something out of their stories like that it's interesting to me to make sure that that families who don't want to be in or who love the traditional learning environment um are able to access them and that we're not expanding to high school um at a huge rate unless it's really warranted and we don't have the parents that's just a concern and then also from a um from a
058support standpoint i know as a parent it's more difficult when everything's online and i'm trying to ask my daughter that you know coding and the tech side of the world the certifications those are all very valuable but being able to so many one-on-one as you were talking about holding eye contact interacting with each other on a personal level is is very important and i um there's also research out there that is showing that it's you know that it's mostly through social media but there's a lot of downsides of being on our devices all the time for all of us whatever we can do to encourage face to face so overall i guess i would say i'm really excited about this strategic i think the fact that we have one is really important and really notable
059i think you know i i read i remember reading a number of years ago um something which talked about what is the purpose of school and at the moment i read that question i literally was like i have no idea what is the purpose of school other than you know kids are supposed to go and the answer the article closed was preparation for life and ever since i read that it changed my entire and i was an adult reading this but it changed my entire framework for what i expected out of my kids what i wanted from them what i wanted out of classrooms um and i think that you know as a board our job is to look at the you know the 50 000 foot view and i think from that standpoint this
060strategic initiative is wonderful i i love what the graduates would look like at the end of going through this program you know whether whether the details you know and the smaller pieces are still being put in place or are already there um i think for me is less important than looking at the overall structure which i think i i just i really appreciate it like others have said i've had the opportunity to be part of this over different years and different roles um with my kids at different ages in those roles so um i really appreciated getting to sort of see it all packaged together tonight again um and just looking at sort of where we as a district are um i hope that what people sort of get out of this is a really
061um you know as parents or um you know parents of little ones who are looking at our districts and go to our website um and can really look at all of the intentionality behind all the different concepts that our district is really trying to put together for people um i think that's a really really positive and important thing um you know our goals are very strong and i think you know if we can and all of our kids along that pathway i think that this district should be really proud so thank you to everyone who's been involved in it and i am really supportive is owned and operated by wisd on behalf of all constituent districts this is a shared governance and cost agreement to maintain this resource for educational endeavors of the county this
062agreement covers the casual