DCS Board Work Session - 11/13/2025

001Call to order the November 13, 2025 board work session. Mr. Childers, if you will pray for us. [snorts] >> Okay. Pray. [sighs] Lord, thank you for having each of us here tonight. Uh thank you for this board and uh placing us on here and the honor of uh doing your work. Lord, just pray that you grant us the wisdom, the right decisions. Uh students, teachers be first in our minds in everything we uh we lead this board through this evening. Lord, we love you. In your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen. >> Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> I now call on Sarah Baver

002and Anna Rizzo with Education Elements to present our new strategic plan. Hi, good afternoon. You all able to hear me? I will say as a former English teacher, I'm still not accustomed to talking into a mic. So, please let me know at any point if I need to adjust so that you can hear me more loudly and clearly. But, we're really grateful to have the opportunity to speak and present with y'all this afternoon as we walk through the new strategic plan. So we have a number of slides prepared to help facilitate and assist in this process and I do want to create an opportunity for Dr. Ascu to say some opening words um to introduce our background a little bit what we do as an organization and then I'll take it from there. I'm also

003working to adjust the clicker. Sorry, I might need help with that. Thank you. >> There you go. Awesome. >> Thank you. So I can share a little bit more about our background. So I'm joined by my colleague Anna and we work for an organization called Education Elements. We've been partnering with Dothan for about a year and a half now over the creation of the strategic vision and strategic plan that we're going to walk through this afternoon. A little bit about my background. As I mentioned before, I'm a former high school English teacher. Um, I spent most of my career in education, the last 15 years working in Arkansas and Mississippi. So, I started out teaching in the rural Arkansas Delta. From there, I transitioned into teacher education, working with the University of Arkansas, particularly around

004closing teacher shortages throughout the state. And then since then, I've worked with education elements with a number of districts across the country with strategic planning. A lot of my work really centers on making sure community engagement is at the center of our process. And so we're going to talk a lot about what that has looked like throughout the creation of this strategic plan. Really with the core belief that what goes into a strategic plan as the north star that guides decision-making for a district needs to reflect the aspirations, vision, values, and needs of a community. And that is what gets me up every morning is being able to partner with districts and help them to really center that in their decision making. I'm joined by my colleague Anna. I'm going to have her quickly introduce

005herself and then I'll share a little bit more about Education Elements as an organization. >> Hi everyone. Good evening. My name is Anna Rizzo. I am one of the partners at Education Elements. Like Sarah, I support districts across the country with strategic planning and implementation and I also oversee a lot of our partnerships to ensure that we have uh great impact in the work that we do. Uh due to today's setup, I'm going to let Sarah lead most of the conversation so you don't have a bunch of back and forth with the mic, but I will be taking notes in the slide deck throughout our conversation. As board members, your feedback and insight on what has been created due to the hard work of a lot of people, a lot of community engagement is really

006essential to the success of the strategic plan. And I may jump in here and there to answer some questions as well, but excited to be here tonight and listen to the conversation. Thank you, Anna. So, I'll share a little bit more about education elements as an organization. Um, I think we might need to make sure the deck is clicked again. Thank you. So, as I mentioned before, Education Elements is a consulting firm that partners with school districts, state education agencies around the country. We work in 45 plus states. We've worked with over 400 school districts. And as you can see, the size of the impact around that is in the tens of thousands. When we think about the number of students and community members that we've been able to partner and support throughout our processes,

007we really center on this idea of real change made local, which again goes back to our beliefs around community engagement and making sure that that is a central part of our process. You'll get to hear a little bit more about what that process has looked like as we talk through the components of the proposed strategic plan. But before I do that, I want to talk a little bit about what this conversation will look like and how we're structuring it. Again, as Anna mentioned, really wanting to lean into your input and feedback as board members because ultimately you are the deciders and the ones who ratify this plan and commit the school district to action as a result of what is communicated in the plan. So, I'm going to share a little bit about what the

008structure of our conversation will look like just to make sure we're set up with some tools to really guide our collaboration. Then we'll spend a pretty decent chunk of time walking through the components of the plan step by step so that you can understand what the plan includes, but also and perhaps more importantly to understand the community input that shaped what you see in the components of that plan. So, we want to make sure that you have a really thorough understanding of not just what the plan contains, but also what did we hear from our community across a number of different stakeholder groups that informed the development of that content. From there, as you can see, we'll spend about 90 minutes. So, the bulk of our time this afternoon, making sure that we have the

009opportunity to hear clarifying questions, connections, and also constructive feedback from you as board members to make sure as we move into talking about implementation of the strategic plan. We're able to be really clear about the feedback and input that you have and how that is going to guide ultimately the finalization and implementation of this plan. One of the other things that is really key to our work at Education Elements is this idea that we really believe everybody needs to be engaged from the start and that to have really successful, productive conversations, we want to create the opportunity for every single person in the conversation to share some perspectives as they are walking into that. And so the way that we do this is a check-in question. And so the check-in question that I would like

010to turn over to the board to hear from each of you just to start with and to really be able to continually pull back to throughout this presentation is what do you hope the community views about the strategic plan? So that's my question for you. What and how do you hope the Dothan City Schools community views the strategic plan ultimately at the end of this process? And Dr. Turner, I'll turn it to you to kick us off and then we can just wrap around and quickly hear just a quick quick responses from the board. >> Well, I hope the community sees it as a plan that we actually use, not something that we put on a shelf and don't return back to. >> Thank you. I hope that the community uh will get involved with

011us with this program. Uh we've had pretty good participation thus far and I hope it continues. >> Thank you. So, I hope that our community will get engaged and stay engaged. Um I've spoken plenty of times about that. It's going to take all of us, not just the educators, not just the board, but our businesses, churches, everyone involved. And we need everyone. We have a a tall order ahead of us. So, thank you. >> Um, I hope that they view it as something that's working together. Kind of like Taiisha was saying, as a community, this is something everybody has their place and they all fit into it. and not just this is something Dothan City Schools is doing, but that as a community we can all get behind that. >> Thank you. >> I think

012everybody's said all the important things. You know, I hope that it is a plan that um is measurable and that we revisit and we don't do to check a box on a report. I hope it focuses on teachers first uh with just a whole lot of common sense and students are what we're here for but students are going to be here. They're always going to be here. It's the teachers that we have to have >> u to shape these students. So >> thank you. >> I hope that it will be a guide for continuous improvement for the school district. >> Thank you. So hearing a lot of themes come up in our shared responses that we'll hit on as we walk through the components and content of the plan. I think especially what a number

013of you named around ensuring that there is buyin and investment from the beginning that this plan is a shared reflection of the community and provides a pathway for the community to continue to be involved in partnership together but making sure at the core of it we're really centering teachers and students since that is the value proposition of a school district. and making sure ultimately that what this plan does is articulates a really clear path for implementation that drives that continuous improvement knowing that we want to make sure our teachers and students aren't only supported but are also accelerating a very high and rigorous bar of learning and achievement. So, thank you for checking in. A few other things that I want to name to set us up before we walk through the components and content

014of the strategic plan is to talk about how we're going to frame the conversation where we turn it over to you and get to hear feedback and input after we've walked through the content of the plan. So, one thing that I'm going to reference a little bit later is going to be what we call gradients of agreement. I want to share it now so that as we're walking through the components and content of the plan, you have this tool in your mind as a frame of reference to be thinking about where maybe in this current moment you land on this scale. And so when I talk about gradients of agreement, it's a five-point scale from 1 through five. One represents you strongly agree. What you might be saying in your head as you hear about

015a piece of the plan content of it is I really like this. Two is agree. So, what that might sound like is it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Three is support with reservation. So, I can live with this. It's not great, but I don't want to hold up the group. And then four or five. And then I think four and five in particular will be really valuable for our conversation and having input and feedback because four, if you land at that place on the scale, is signaling that there's more discussion needed. So this might sound like I don't understand this well enough. I have some clarifying questions about what we mean here before I can say if I agree or disagree with the content of the plan. And then five would be strongly disagree.

016So I'm not on board. Do not count on my support. We want to be using these gradients of agreement later on when we're having our feedback conversation to know where each of you land so that we can really prioritize exactly what it is that we need to discuss to make sure we have shared understanding and clarity around what this plan is committing the district to with action. Thinking about those gradients of agreement and especially if you might land on the four or five end of the scale is also asking this idea of proposal setting. So if you do find yourself with a piece of the plan saying that you lean towards the end or a five on that scale, what I would ask is to offer a proposal. So rather than rejecting a piece of

017the plan outright, what I'm really curious to hear would be your recommendations. So these recommendations might sound like, I have a proposal for us to add this in or a proposal for us to clarify this term. And really one of the ways that we want to gut check these proposals or recommendations is making sure that when we are objecting, we believe that that objection will help to move us closer to our desired outcome. So many of the things that you just referenced in our check-in, making sure this plan is really clear about how it's supporting and equipping teachers, how it's making sure students are supported with maintaining a really high bar of rigorous learning, that the community is involved and has that pathway and shared ownership. Those are the things that we want to keep

018centered with these objections so that it moves us closer to that desired outcome. We want to make sure too as we talk through the community engagement data and how that has informed the content of the plan that we really are clear that this is based off of what we know to be true from that community engagement. And then this last piece again as a former English teacher is something that I always personally struggle with, which is making sure that objections don't solely rest on personal word choice. We do want to make sure in this conversation that we're being really clear with how the plan is laid out and the content of it that we're using language that is clear, accessible, easily understood to any person who's going to be engaging with it. And so there

019is a time and place for that conversation. And we want to make sure that we don't spend too much time in talking about word choice if it is straying us from a conversation about are we getting closer to our desired outcome of what we want to be true when we think about the district committing to action as a result of what's in this plan. We'll come back to these two tools later on in our conversation, but again, I wanted to frame that at the top so that as we're talking through the content of the plan, you can be thinking about where you might fall on that scale of 1 through five with our gradients of agreement. I mentioned this before, but what I want to talk about now is when we say a strategic plan,

020what do we ultimately hope to achieve with a strategic plan? And then how is a strategic plan structured to meet that desired end goal? And so ultimately a strategic plan should represent the values and aspirations and needs of your community. And some of the ways that we do that is by being really intentional about the components of the plan. In addition to that to create those really robust components we need to make sure that the process for creating the plan is really intentional and that's where our governance structure comes in. So what I want to talk through is how we got to the plan that you're going to see this afternoon and the different groups that were involved in the creation of that. So we have our project team which was responsible for the day-to-day

021management of the project including kind of the logistics, the planning, the communication especially in partnership with all the activities that we facilitated with community engagement but then also our partnership with our steering team. So the project team was represented with a number of different leaders across the district. Whereas our steering team is meant to be that representative body that represents a number of different stakeholder groups across the community to make sure that we have teacher perspective that we have parent perspective, community perspective, and even student perspective. So that as that steering team is working to analyze and unpack the data that we collected through community engagement that that perspective is consistently informing the decisions that were made that now show up in the content that we're going to look at. So much of what we're

022going to walk through in terms of the content of the plan, know that it was developed by and for and with a number of representatives of the community who are there intentionally to be the ambassadors, cheerleaders, advisors, and representative of the community as a whole. Your position as a school board is to make sure in ratifying this strategic plan that it ultimately does represent the community and it aligns to the district priorities of where the district needs to continue to go as Dr. Ascu was naming around this idea of continuous improvement. And so to put that another way for our decision-making layers we think about the work that the project team and steering did team did as recommending the content that you're going to see in this plan. They're recommending that content because of the

023input gathered from the community and your role as the board of education is to ultimately decide based off of this content, the process and the community perspective that informed it. You will ultimately make the decision to commit the district to action to follow this strategic plan. And so again, the purpose of today's conversation is to make sure you can give that input and feedback knowing that you are in that position of authority to give and ultimately ratify and decide around the plan. Speaking of our process, now that we've talked about the layers of governance structure and also decision- making, I want to quickly walk through the different steps that we took to create this plan. So this is our strategic planning process. Again, as you can see, it has spanned over the last year or

024so. First with some work around the strategic vision that we're going to look at. And then through the strategic plan. When I say strategic vision, I mean mission, vision, and values. And then plan, I mean what are our pillars and what are the actions that we're committing to based off of those priorities that the pillar defines for us. And so throughout spring of last year, what we really focused on was first being really clear and plan and align about where are we currently as a district? What are the different initiatives and priorities that are in play? And let's be clear to really decide on who do we need to connect with, how are we going to connect with them, and what questions are we going to ask to make sure we have a really deep

025and thorough understanding of not just the strengths and the values and aspirations, but also the needs that different community groups would articulate that then will lead to the creation of the plan. That led us into our foundations, design, and launch phases over the spring. again as we were focused on that strategic vision of thinking about kind of the strategic direction of where we want to go. And then that led us into the work that we did this past fall around design and launch when it comes to the pillars and priorities and action steps that the strategic plan is committing the district to for action. This is not something that you need to have memorized, but something I wanted to share again to really articulate that this was a step-by-step intentional process where along the way

026we were always gut gut-checking and making sure the decisions were made were reflective of the community perspective. And that brings us into talking a little bit more about how exactly we facilitated and gathered that community engagement. I mentioned this before, but some of the core beliefs that inform why we are so intentional and thorough to have this a part of our methodology is because we really believe when you have investment from the community at the beginning of the creation of a plan. You don't need to ask for buyin at the end because the plan ultimately when different stakeholders across the community see it, we'll see how their perspective and input led to the shaping and creation of it. Community engagement also ensures that we're able to hear from a wide variety of voices. So, we

027want to cast as wide of a net as possible to make sure we can know there are people who are consistently involved in processes like this, but also that we're intentional to maybe connect with people who aren't always involved. Again, to ensure, as many of you referenced in your check-in, that this plan is something that the community sees themselves in very intentionally. And I also heard you mention in your check-ins around implementation that this plan is not something that is just put on a shelf and not referenced again that it's also not just a checkpoint and really informs compliance but rather drives meaningful engagement and continuous improvement. And we truly believe that when we do community engagement like the way that we've done in the creation of this strategic plan that it will set us

028up for very successful implementation. So thinking of those core beliefs, you might be wondering, okay, how exactly did you do this community engagement, we always take a two-pronged approach because we want to have both quantitative and qualitative data. And the way that we gather that quantitative data is through a survey called the data triangle. That is actually a collection of three different surveys. So it's three different surveys because those surveys each have been intentionally designed for different stakeholder groups. We have our school performance survey. So that's a tool that helps to measure the perception of leaders and teachers about school practices. Again, we see this survey as really important because we want to make sure teacher voice is really authentically represented and captured throughout this process. We have a student voice survey that is actually

029divided into a number of different grade bands. So it covers grades 3 through 12, but we have an elementary version and then we have a middle school and high school version for grades 6 through 12. Again, to make sure that we are being really clear with students and capturing their perspective about how they're currently experiencing schooling, what are those strengths and then where are those opportunities for improvement? And then lastly, our family engagement survey, which helps to measure the perception of family members and community members about school and district practices. So, we deploy these three surveys very intentionally to cast a really wide net and have that quantitative data that we're able to reference throughout this process. Across each of these three surveys, we have consistent domains that our questions are aligned to. So think

030of these domains as the categories and the questions underneath it are all aligned to help us better approximate the perception around these categories. So leadership practices and decisions this is talking about vision modeling improvement the extent to which school and district leaders set that really clear vision model effective practices and make datainformed decisions to drive continuous improvement. Then we have curriculum. So this is related to alignment accessibility of curriculum. So the quality of it thinking about is the instructional content and the learning experiences associated with that both meeting student needs but also driving academic achievement and growth as well which connects to our third category which is teaching practices and decisions. So this is thinking about not just the how and what with curriculum but making sure that we have clarity around the instructional class

031strategies that are being used in classrooms, the professional education and learning that teachers are benefiting and engaged in and ultimately do we see that engaging students and promoting learning. These three categories are incredibly important when we think about defining the instructional core. So again, making sure teachers are equipped to facilitate rigorous and engaging learning for students and that they're getting the strategic support and modeling from leaders not just in the school building but also across the district as a whole. And that leads us into our last two categories around social emotional learning and family engagement. And I think this is a really helpful place to pause to be clear what we mean by these two terms. So in my work across the country, I know that social emotional learning is a term that is used

032in a lot of different contexts in a lot of different ways. The way that we particularly use it in this context and in this survey is to think about making sure students are supported to better facilitate a healthy learning environment. So it's not talking about social emotional learning separate from what happens in the classroom from an instructional perspective but making sure that we have the conditions of support and success so that students can engage and learn very rigorously to promote that high level of academic achievement. That's the context in which we talk about this again to really drive the instructional core to make sure teachers and students are supported and that leads us into family engagement. Again, thinking about how family engagement and partnership and community partnership can help to support the instructional core, but

033making sure everything ultimately goes back to this idea of the caliber and level of learning in the classroom. So, what family engagement means in the context of our survey is the strength and frequency of communication, partnership, and collaboration between families and schools to support learning and success. So ultimately you can see across all five of these categories a focus on learning and success and making sure we have clarity around the perceptions across different stakeholder groups around the conditions of what is going to lead to that learning and success for our students and our teachers. So thinking of those three surveys that we administered as well as those categories captured in the survey, I want to talk a little bit about some of the numbers that represent who we were able to connect with and how

034we were able to connect with them. So for the surveys that we administered, we were able to hear from Oh, I think I'm getting some water. Thank you. [laughter] Thank you, Dr. Turner. So 1,840 students, parents, community members, teachers, staff members, board members completed the survey, which is a significant percentage when we think about ultimately the perspectives that informed the content of this plan. I mentioned before that we do both quantitative and qualitative methods for community engagement. So in addition to connecting and hearing from that many stakeholders with our surveys, we also layered on top of that seven different focus groups so that we could provide even more nuanced and rich context and insight around the themes that were coming up in the survey. So we facilitated those seven focus groups across a number of

035different stakeholder groups and ultimately 45 stakeholders were represented in those focus groups. So combined between our surveys and the focus groups, we can feel really confident that we were able to capture a very wide and deep perspective across the community that has led to the development and creation of this plan. Thinking of that context, where I want us to go next is to start to talk through the components and content of the plan and speaking to how those insights and themes that we gathered through community engagement have informed the components and content of the plan. So what we're going to talk through are these four different sections. When we think about a strategic vision and a strategic plan, we always start with the two pieces of vision and mission. So mission is really our starting

036point. We think about our mission as really defining and articulating what are our strengths that we want to build on in service of our vision which helps to capture where are we headed. So those two components work together really intentionally to then lead to our values. Our values are our guard rails when we're making decisions to leverage our mission in service of our vision. How are we always checking our decisions? And do we have shared understanding and alignment as a district and community about the ways that we should be filtering and making those decisions? That's what our values help to capture, which then supports our pillars. Our pillars are specifically what are the things that we need to prioritize, our areas of focus, so that we can build on our mission to get closer to

037the vision that our plan articulates for us, that desired outcome. And so with that, I want to speak to those components and the content of what we have in the proposed strategic plan. Again, the purpose of this section is to make sure you all are set up and very clear on the components. So then we can move into a conversation where we gather your input and feedback about this content. So we're going to start with the proposed mission. What you can see on this slide was the current mission of what we started with some considerations and feedback. Again, when we think about the mission being our starting point, our strengths, some of the things that we ask, especially in our focus groups to check in whether or not we needed to update this mission was

038what are the strengths and what do people love about Dothan City Schools so that we're really clear across different stakeholder groups what that shared understanding is. And you can see from these two quotes here, two examples of what we heard from different constituents around how exactly they would answer those two questions. And so based off of the feedback that we gathered throughout our community engagement as well as the analysis and decision-making of the steering team again knowing that the steering team is a representative body that captures different perspectives across the community that led to the creation of this updated mission that you see in the proposed strategic plan. So the updated mission is the mission of Dothan city school system is to prepare the whole child to build a better tomorrow. So this is thinking

039about what are our strengths, how are we building on them and that leads us into what our vision needs to be to articulate what we mean by build a better tomorrow. And what we found through our community engagement work again is that actually the current vision of empower everyone every day works and represents the community. And so we didn't make any updates to that vision. So you'll see an updated mission vi uh mission but you'll see that the vision that was used previously has still remained the same again because we wanted the community engagement that feedback and input from the community to guide this decision making and sometimes that decision-m looks like things work as they are and we want to keep that as well as there are areas that we need to continue to

040improve and focus on and so let's make sure that that is reflected and captured in our plan. And again, here on this slide, you can see two example quotes, two of many that help to articulate why exactly we made that decision about why we're proposing that the vision not be updated, but that we adopt this new mission statement that you saw on the previous slide. Now, this leads us into our values. So we've talked about mission being our current starting point, vision be where we are headed. Our values again are those guard rails for our decision making that help us to have that alignment as a district community to know that the decisions we make daily are going to get us that much closer to our desired vision. And so there weren't any previous values

041that were articulated in the sense that we often describe in a strategic plan. And so that was a great opportunity again to use that community engagement feedback to land on what do we hear across different stakeholder groups being valued. What are the non-negotiables that will guide our decision-making? And what do we want to consistently model for our students? So what are leaders modeling? What are teachers modeling? And then how are family members helping to support and reinforce that? And that led the steering team to propose that we adopt excellence, integrity, respect, trust, and unity as the values for this strategic plan. Again, it's not enough to just say a word. It's really important to make sure for that shared understanding and alignment that we have a common definition of what we mean by a word

042so that we can use that common definition again as that guard rail or filter for our decision making. And so you'll see on this slide the definitions that the steering team worked to create to really clearly define what we mean by each of these terms. And I'll give you a moment to take a look at that. One thing that I want to name with the definitions of these values is that in addition to the steering team working to create them, the steering team did not create them in a vacuum. They were created by looking at all the feedback that we gathered through those surveys and those focus groups. Again, to really clearly define what are those shared values that represent our community and that we want to make sure we're consistently modeling and using as

043the non-negotiable for our decision- making. So later when we move into the feedback and input portion of the conversation, that will be a really great opportunity to ask clarifying questions, make connections, and also offer some constructive recommendations or proposals about how you might see these values continue to be strengthened. Again, knowing that they are designed intentionally to represent the community. And this leads us into our pillars. Again, when we think about the structure and purpose of a strategic plan, the pillars really help to define what are we going to prioritize? What are going to be our areas of focus that will help us get to the vision that we've passed as our north star? And these pillars again were created based off of all of that community engagement data and were also designed over multiple

044conversations to make sure each time we got closer to defining and proposing this that we were always going back to that community engagement data as the filter for what we were going to prioritize. And so you'll see proposed in this strategic plan four pillars. Collaborative leadership and connected community, promoting mental health and emotional learning, academic excellence for lifelong success, and then pathways to purpose and career readiness. And similarly, as we did for the values, I'll give you a chance to read what we mean by these pillars because again, it's not enough to just label the pillar. We want to be really clear about what we mean by that pillar when we say that this is a priority or this is a focus area. What exactly are we saying we need to prioritize? And this is

045important both for the community seeing themselves represented but also ensuring successful implementation that this is not something just referenced and put on a shelf and not brought out again but something that is consistently guiding the actions we're taking. So I'll give you a chance to look at those definitions. So now that you've had a chance to read the definitions of those pillars, what I want to talk a little bit more concretely about is how that community engagement data showed up in the development of those pillars and why those pillars are the ones are proposed as the focus areas for the school district. So our first pillar around collaborative leadership and connected community. What we saw in our community engagement both from our data triangle surveys and the focus groups we conducted is that leadership practices

046and decisions is a clear strength. So we see consistently across a number of different stakeholder groups. This idea that leaders are actively supporting data-driven inquiry. They have high expectations for teachers and for students. And where we saw specifically an opportunity for improvement was around that partnership between leaders and the school and then family and parents. So what we saw especially in our data triangle survey related to family engagement is that while families will often receive clear academic progress updates, there are some places where they might feel disconnected from what is happening within classrooms and school buildings. And so because of that, we want to build on the strengths that we see around leadership practices and also what already exists with communication and collaboration and continue to really focus on fostering shared responsibility and community trust.

047And so that led to the development of this pillar around collaborative leadership and connected community. That leads us into our second pillar, promoting mental health and social emotional learning. What we saw as some of our insights from the surveys and focus groups is that we see consistently both from teacher perception and student perception that teachers are giving regular and precise feedback that they're asking students checks for understanding to see where they are in their mastery of academic content. But where there is an opportunity for improvement is related to students feeling comfortable asking questions. And we know students having that opportunity to ask clarifying questions to really lead their inquiry is ultimately important for really rigorous learning where students are mastering high levels of academic success. And so because of that that connects to this idea

048of promoting social emotional learning again specifically in support of raising really high standards of what learning looks like. We think about this pillar as setting the conditions for success that allows rigorous achievement focused learning to happen in the classroom. And so what we also saw in the survey is that teachers care deeply and rules around expectations for students are clear, but sometimes students may experience behavior disrupting learning. And so by prioritizing this pillar again, we're removing those barriers and focusing on those conditions that allow all students to engage very deeply and rigorously in mastering academic content. And that leads us into this pathway around purpose and career readiness. So what we heard consistently in the survey as well as in our focus groups was that students work hard but sometimes that learning is not always

049connected to realworld opportunities. And so making sure that that focus on academic mastery in the classroom is helping students to feel confident and clear around what success looks like not just K through 12 but also post-graduation. So wanting to build that confidence in what success looks like when they graduate led us to the creation of this pillar around pathways and purpose for career readiness. So making sure that both what's happening in the classroom and beyond the classroom facilitates learning that connects to their future ready goals and that we're supporting durable and transferable skills that will allow students to be successful whether they're employed, enrolled, or enlisted. And then academic excellence for lifelong success. We think about this through the lens of technology and lesson planning frameworks are strong. And yet we still want to make

050sure we're prioritizing the rigor of our curriculum. This was something that came up often in our focus groups that we did with parents and families. making sure that we have a consistent and thorough commitment to challenging curriculum that raises that really high bar of rigorous learning. When we think about making sure students are prepared for college and career readiness as we think about how this pillar helps to support that other pillar that we just talked about with pathways to college and career readiness. Oops. So now that we've talked through some of the initial insights that led to the development of these pillars, I want to go even deeper and add some more texture to what we heard from the community that led to the development of these four pillars. Again, this framing is leading us

051into a place where we can have some input and feedback conversation. So as we are looking at this content again be thinking about where you fall on that scale of one through five with our gradients of agreement when we think about ratifying and committing the district to action with these four pillars being the priorities for implementation. So going back to collaborative leadership and connected community, here are some examples of quotes that we heard in focus groups that the steering team pulled out that led to the both and of this is a strength that we want to continue to work on and there's an opportunity or need for improvement that makes us want to have this as a focus area. So you can see some quotes from that community engagement that align with this pillar. What

052I think these quotes really help to capture is thinking about the both and of there are places that we can point to as success stories around communication and collaboration, but also opportun unities for improvement. And when we think about a really successful pillar, especially one that has a really clear pathway to implementation and for continuous improvement, we need to make sure we're coming from an assetbased perspective, that strength-based perspective, so that we can use those strengths to continue to close gaps. And these quotes help to name those strengths, but also those areas of improvement related to this pillar. And specifically as we think about successful implementation, it's important with these pillars to not just define what are we going to prioritize, what do we mean by this pillar, but also what is the impact we

053are working towards. How will we know we're successful at the end of the implementation of this strategic plan and these impact statements help to articulate exactly that. So I'll give you a chance to look at that for collaborative leadership and connected community. So, similar to what we talked through with this pillar. I want to repeat that process for the three remaining pillars again so that you can see examples of feedback from the community that inform the development of this pillar and what we mean by success of the intended impact of what will be true after implementation of the strategic plan. [snorts] So that leads us into our next pillar around promoting mental health and social emotional learning. Here are some examples of what we heard from different stakeholder groups across the community that led the

054steering team to develop and propose this pillar. And similarly we'll look at the intended impact. So we will know we are successful with focusing on this pillar if these two things are true at the end of our implementation. I think it's important to talk about this pillar in context with our next pillar of academic excellence for lifelong success. Again, thinking about what is prioritized in this pillar is helping to establish those conditions that allow students to engage in really rigorous achievementoriented learning. And so when we think about the pillar of prioritizing academic excellence for lifelong success, this is some example quotes of what we heard from the community across different constituent groups that represented why this needs to be an area of focus. And when we think about this pillar, what we mean by success

055are these three aspects. We will know we're successful if And then for our last pillar around pathways to purpose and career readiness, these were some sample quotes of what we heard from the community that led this to be prioritized. And these quotes really help to emphasize what we're building on as strengths again with that assetbased perspective so that we can continue to ensure career readiness is not something that happens only in the high school context but is a focus K through 12 and that we're being really intentional with not just the learning experiences in the classroom, but also creating opportunities and partnerships that support that outside of the classroom. And this is what success will look like for that pillar. So, now that we've had a chance to talk about the process that led to

056the creation of this proposed content, who was involved both throughout our many community engagement activities from the surveys we administered to the focus groups that we facilitated as well as the role of the steering team as being that representative body that helped to analyze and advise the content of this plan. Where I want us to go next is to move into that conversation of input and feedback from you as the board of education. And so again reminding us of those decision-making layers, the content that I just talked through and the community engagement that reinforced it. These are recommendations that are being shared on behalf of the project and steering team based off of the input from the community and ultimately your role as the board of education is to decide and ratify and commit the

057district to action as articulated in this plan. And so the way that we're going to do that is again referencing those tools that I named at the beginning, talking about our gradients of agreement and then using those gradients to know exactly where we need to focus our conversation so that we can leave not only with clarity but also confidence around what the district is committing to with this strategic plan. So as a reminder, gradients of agreement, I'm going to ask you on a scale of one through five where you fall for different components as we go step by step. So one is strongly agree, two is agree, three is support with reservations, and then where we definitely want to make sure to slow down the conversation is if you are at a four with more

058discussion needed or a five for strongly disagree. And underneath that, you can see some sample quotes that might help to approximate where you would put yourself on this scale. In addition to asking you where you fall on this scale, depending on the outcome of that, that will lead us into a conversation that will structure by connections, clarifications, and critiques. So connections will be what about this component and content of the strategic plan resonates with you and why? What clarifications do you have? So clarifying questions that you have about how the component was developed. What is meant by the component? And then critiques. This is where we move into that proposal. So where you have a recommendation that moves us closer to our desired outcome knowing what we all shared at the beginning with our check-in

059question. And a reminder of that idea of rather than rejecting something outright, we really want to hear from you your proposals and recommendations about how to continue to strengthen the strategic plan knowing that it was designed and developed to represent the community and have that laser focus on continuous improvement of supporting our teachers and students. So, we'll start with our updated mission knowing that the vision remains unchanged. So the updated mission is that the mission of Dothan city school system is to prepare the whole child to build a better tomorrow and that vision remains the same empower everyone every day. So what I want to ask you to share as a board is where you fall on these gradients of agreement when you think about adopting this new proposed mission statement. So I'll give you

060a moment to decide where you would place yourself and then Dr. Turner, I'll start with you and we can go around and hear from each board member to know where we need to focus our conversation for input and feedback. >> Yeah. Are you ready, Dr. Turner? >> On the mission statement, I'm I'm strongly agree. >> Thank you. >> Mission statement, I agree strongly. >> Thank you. >> Number one, strongly agree as well. Thank you. >> I agree. Ma'am, >> thank you. >> Number one, strongly agree. >> I am at a number one for the mission statement. >> Thank you. >> Two So, I heard us all reference either a one or a two. So, I do want to make some space just in case there are some connections, clarifications, any critiques that a board member

061would offer before we move on and talk about the next component of the plan. So any additional input feedback that you would like to name about the proposed mission before we move on to the value statements. I'm taking silence to be no. No. Again, as a former teacher, I'm very good at my wait time, but I don't want to slow down the conversation if we don't need to. So, let's move into our proposed values. Excellence, integrity, respect, trust, and unity. I'll give you a chance to refamiliarize yourself not just with these terms, but also the definitions of what the steering team created. Again, knowing that these definitions represent what we heard from the community in our engagement process. So, we're going to move into our gradients of agreement. Again, as we think about committing the

062district to action with using these values as guard rails, knowing that these definitions were not written in a vacuum, but meant to represent what we heard from the community and created by that steering team that had representation across the community. So, board members, teachers, leaders, community members, students. Curious to hear where we fall on the scale for these definitions. And Dr. Turner, I'll start with you again. Just to clarify, this is aspirational, right? >> Yes. These are the things that we want to model for our students that we want to use as the filter for our decision- making because we believe that if we consistently uphold these values, it will help us to realize that vision of what we've adopted with empower everyone every day and our mission of prepare the whole child to build

063a better tomorrow. Amate >> Thank you. >> I'm going with agree. >> Thank you. agree. >> Thank you. >> Two. >> Thank you. >> Um at two. >> Thank you. >> One. And we'll when we come back we'll hear from her as well. But because we are in a lot of places of twos where we agree, I think there's still an opportunity for us to have a conversation about maybe some connections, some clarifications, if there's a particular value and definition that you would like to discuss. I think this is the perfect opportunity to do so. >> Can I ask a question? And I apologize. When we did the first round of this, I thought we were agreeing with just the mission statement. Were we also agreeing with the vision or was that not up for

064discussion? >> Yes, also agreeing with the vision knowing that it was unchanged. Would you like us to go back? >> Yeah, Kim, could we? >> Yes, happy to do that. >> Um, so the vision of Doan City Schools is to empower everyone every day will empower them to do what exactly? >> Great clarifying question. >> We don't empower our teachers to make decisions. Um I mean so I I don't understand what that means. >> Does anyone want to offer? >> I also want to know how we measure that. What I would offer to that question, which I think is not just a clarifying question, but a really important one, again, knowing that the purpose of our strategic plan is to provide that shared understanding and alignment so that all of our daily decisions help to

065reinforce that desired outcome we are moving towards. We would think about the components of the strategic plan and particularly those pillars being what we are empowering everyone every day to do to make sure that what those pillars articulate and the key actions within those pillars that is what people are empowered to consistently implement and guide their actions. What I think that also raises as an opportunity for discussion are some recommendations or proposals that you might offer around how we could better strengthen that vision statement. >> I had a complaint but not the solution to the problem. Um, that's okay. and that's why we're having this conversation. >> I I just if we need to be more specific if that's what we're going to focus on for our for our vision. >> I don't I don't

066think it's a practical vision. I've talked to Dr. Asku about this. I'd love to empower the teachers more and he says, "Oh, but we have all these rules and we have this curriculum, you know." Um, so I think that that's a bit of a reach and just um a nicity to put up on the wall and on some t-shirts and it's not really measurable or concrete or even practical in a lot of sense. >> Yep. >> And going back to what you named in your check-in, we don't want this to just be a checkbox. We want it to consistently show up and be measurable. >> Were you gonna add something, Dr. Jer? No, >> I just want it to be measurable. that's, you know, how are we going to measure that? And >> I don't

067have a solution to that either >> without adding something to it. Um, >> how do you measure if someone's empowered? >> It's a great clarifying question. So, as you can probably hear from Anna typing, we're taking those notes in the slide deck so that we can come back and reference that at a later point. So really appreciate slowing us down to make sure we could feel those clarifying questions but also capture what we would like to see to make this vision statement even stronger. And it's sounding like we're in a place of there are some opportunities to strengthen it to be more concrete and measurable and that there might be some further discussion needed to exactly determine how we do that. uh we might want to we might want to add ability to that statement

068in some way. >> Thank you for that recommendation. I think something that would be helpful for this conversation as well is knowing that if there might have been a lack of clarity when we did gradients of agreement in the first round, I would like to propose going around again, but really zooming in on that vision statement. So that way we can get a pulse check from the entire board how everyone is interpreting that statement as it stands. So, I'll put up that unchanged vision statement and we'll quickly do a pulse check again knowing what we've heard so far where you would put yourself on that scale of one through five so that we have that in our record. So, Dr. Turner, where would you put yourself on that scale for this vision in its current

069form? >> Five. Thank you. Okay. I would put I would put myself as a three. Thank you. >> Four. Thank you. >> Four. >> Thank you. >> Three. Thank you. Five. Thank you. Thank you. So, I appreciate Anna slowing us down to make sure we could hear that from each board member. And that continues to support this idea that as we think about that vision statement in particular, there's an opportunity again for us to revisit our community engagement data. And with the standards of making sure it's concrete, measurable, and actionable, there's some opportunity for us to update it. And again, I want to confirm if there's a recommendation of a proposed vision, we can definitely capture that in our notes. But if they're not, then we can leave that as a conversation that we'll continue

070to have and come back with an updated vision statement. So hearing no proposals about how to update the vision statement, we'll put that as a place for further conversation. And going back to those values we just checked in about where we are for the gradients of agreement with those values. Again, this is an opportunity where you're not necessarily voting for all the values unless you feel confident. If there's a particular value that you would like to have further conversation about, either making a connection to, asking a clarifying question, or proposing how to make stronger, we want to have that conversation. So, is there a particular value or set of values that you believe we need to discuss further? I think on one something we've talked about as a board in the past is that we

071want more mentorship training opportunities for our teachers. And so we say that we want that for our students, but I think the teacher aspect has to come >> first. We have to provide that for the teachers so that they can in turn provide that for their students. Um, so I'm not sure how that needs to be worded, but I do think that as part of the excellence is that we >> are giving that opportunity to our teachers as well for moving up in the system for whatever their goals are for excellence that we are helping provide those opportunities for them as well. >> Yes, I really appreciate that and I think that's also a good connection to implementation as we think about these values being ones that we want modeled. What also does that look

072like in terms of exactly what you're naming the support, mentoring, and opportunities for career pathways for teachers in particular? So, thank you for naming that. Just want to clarify. Would you like to see that as an updated definition to excellence or something for us to make sure is a consistent focus in implementation? >> I think it needs to be a change in there. I think as a driving force, it needs to really say >> who. >> I think so many of these are very they're they're open for everybody, but that one specifically says students. >> Um, and I think >> most of these, like I said, are the the whole district, the city, the community, everybody. But that first one is just very >> zoomed in on students. And I think it needs to be

073broader >> than that. >> Absolutely. Okay. So, making sure that what's true for our students is also true for our teachers and updating the definition to reflect that. Additional clarifications, critiques, proposals around these values and their definitions. I'm going to move us on to the proposed pillars, but again, please stop me and slow me down if there's additional conversation we need to have to make sure input and feedback is incorporated into the final version of this proposed plan. So we have four proposed pillars. You can see the terms and definitions of those pillars. Collaborative leadership and connected community, promoting mental health and social emotional learning, academic excellence for lifelong success and pathways to purpose and career readiness. I'm going to ask you to give where you are on that scale for these four pillars in

074their entirety. However, if there's a particular pillar that is holding you back from being a two or one, know that that is where we can focus our conversation. So, if you are a three or lower, you can share in your answer if it's to talk about all four pillars or if there's a particular pillar you would like to have greater conversation around. So I'll give you a chance to reread those pillars and their definitions and then we'll move into our pulse check with our gradients of agrees 48. I'm still looking. Take about another 30 seconds. And then moving into our gradients of agreement. I'm able to project it. Although by this point you probably have it committed to memory. Dr. Turner, where would you put yourself on the scale? just because I think some of

075this is not measurable. >> A two. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> I I'll put myself at number three. Uh I mean put myself at three because of the uh mental health >> component there. >> So opportunity to talk about that pillar in greater detail. >> Thank you. >> Number three. Is there a particular pillar that would be helpful for us to focus discussion on? >> Um, I'm definitely thinking um the academic excellence for lifelong success and that was actually one that I helped with the last session. Thank you. And then Dr. Jones, where would you put yourself? >> I'm trying to decide. >> I don't want to rush your decision making. I'm >> I'm sorry I was late. >> No, you're good. Would you like me to come back to you? >> Please >>

076just go and come back. >> Three, also the mental health aspect. >> Four, just because it's so broad, we're going to cultivate this environment. Well, how like this is supposed to be the how, but it's the 40,000 foot view of the how. So, >> it's all very nice, but we need all of the resources in place to do it. >> Thank you. >> Three. >> Thank you. >> Dr. Jones, would you like to share where you are or would you like us to move into discussion with some clarifications and recommendations first? None of these pillars are predicated on anything else. Just what we have right here on this one. >> Sorry. Can you say that again? the the different pillars >> uh uh you know this the response that you're asking me for now. >>

077So sounds like an opportunity for us to discuss some of the pillars in greater detail. So I know one pillar that was named in sharing where we are on those gradients of agreement is that one around promoting mental health and social emotional learning. So I want to create some space for clarifying questions andor recommendations of how to make that proposal stronger. What I can also do to this theme around the how concrete and measurable, I can also show you the proposed initiatives or actions that would be prioritized in that pillar if that helps to provide some greater clarity. So I'm going to click ahead to that for promoting mental health and social emotional learning to give you a chance to look at the three initiatives tied to that pillar of specifically when we talk about

078how this pillar is defined. What are the priority actions or initiatives that will be implemented to seek that intended impact with that pillar? So now that we have the definition for the pillar as well as the proposed initiatives would love to hear some clarifying questions and or recommendations proposals about how to make this pillar stronger. My concern in the initial part of it is again just that it's talking about more work on the teachers. The teachers will um ensure that the teacher educators are equipped to create safe supportive environments where students can grow, heal, and be heard. I think there needs to be kind of like it says on there, support in there. Um, Dothan City Schools will allocate time, funding, and resources according to a need, ensuring that educators are supported and equipped with

079tools and knowledge to create safe space. >> I feel like it's very this is what educators will do, but not so much what will we do for them that you get into that in there, but that we will support them in that as well. >> So, the recommendation is to strengthen the definition of the pillar to make sure that it aligns with what's being proposed in the initiative. So that's really clear about what supports are educators receiving to be able to implement this effectively. Does that sound like an accurate synthesis? >> Can I be >> Yeah, I think you might want >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Oh, >> okay. I think you might want to focus on the implementation of the whole child and practices districtwide throughout uh uh staff mentoring, wellness checks, etc.

080I think that that could be something that we could focus >> a little deeper on. >> So you see that as an area of need? >> Yeah. And I know you mentioned I think I heard this from a couple board members around the use of mental health in this pillar. So wanted to just create some space if that's something that we need additional clarification or discussion around the term for this pillar and the definition of it. I was just going to add um for the mental health aspect for teachers and children, you know, it says support on here, but what does support look like? Um because >> support can be, you know, I'm your principal. I'm here if you need me. Or support could be licensed, you know, counselors that are trained in helping. So

081both can be labeled support but one is kind of you know not necessarily sufficient for the challenges that our educators and our children are facing. >> So that's sounding like an opportunity to get more clear with the definition and the initiatives and in particular thinking about what might the staffing and allocation resources look like to support this end. >> Yes. And Mrs. Miss Davis, I know you wanted to say something too. >> Yeah. So, and and this may just be a question. So, throughout the rest of the document, when you reference um caring for the whole child and educating the whole child, it's lowercase whole child. This is uppercase whole child. Um was that intentional or >> I think the reason why that is capitalized is in reference to an initiative, a whole child initiative.

082Right. But to your point, whatever language we use, we want to use it consistently throughout the plan. So that's something we can go back and check and make a decision around. >> I am comfortable with lowercase whole child. I am not comfortable with uppercase whole child, which is a brand, and committing our district to a five-year strategic plan with a brand name. >> That's a great recommendation for us to update that language to use whole child and lowercase. want to create additional space for discussing this pillar before we move on to academic excellence for lifelong success. I know that was another pillar that was named. >> I have another um note on this. Um the last one, implement systemwide recognition practices to celebrate students and staff. Um love that for students, love it for staff,

083too. Um but specifically relating to staff, another portion that we need to add in there is um for lack of a better word, customer service are being kind to one another. So everyone in the district has to work together so that when you call to ask a question of someone, you get a kind response. Um and if you don't know that, hold on, let me go find out response. Um, and so you can give me an award all you want, but when you were mean to me last week when I called to ask a question, that's not going to make me feel um, appreciated and it's not going to provoke promote my mental health and social emotional learning. So, >> I think that is a great example of how the values work alongside these pillars.

084When we think about the values being the guard rails for our decision making and the priorities with the pillars being the decisions that we need to make exactly what you're naming around excellence, integrity, respect, unity, I think the exact scenario that you're describing is how we see that show up in this pillar. So, thank you for naming that. To clarify, do you see that as an opportunity to update these initiatives or definition to make that more explicit? >> Yes. And I don't know if it necessarily goes in this category, but that does need to be named somewhere in the um >> in the initiative and in the pillars. >> Thank you. I'm going to move us into academic excellence for lifelong success. But again, know that you can slow me down if we need to

085go back to the pillar we were just discussing. I know this pillar was also named as being a place either for supporting with reservations or needing further discussion. So I want to share those proposed initiatives to provide more clarity around what is concrete and measurable with what might be implemented to achieve the intended impact for this pillar. And so I was the one that mentioned um this pillar and the word I keyed in on was equitable >> which is definitely good but I just think a lot of times people don't have a clear understanding of what equitable is. It doesn't necessarily mean equal. you know, somebody may be starting 50 feet behind the next person. So, I don't know if it's just a um I guess more detailed explanation of that word, but that was

086kind of you know, we can toss out words equitable. Oh, yeah, equitable. But what is equitable really mean? What does it look like? And to the point of making sure this plan is really concrete and measurable and guides our daily decisions, it's sounding like their recommendation is to make sure we're very explicit whether using that term or maybe rewriting it to better define what we mean by that idea. Is that an accurate synthesis? >> Yes. Thank you. additional clarifications, recommendations around this pillar, the language about closing the gaps among different groups. Is is this inclusive in some of this? And I know she just talked about equity. >> I think that's a great example of what we would define as our impact metrics. So previously we looked at our impact statements. So we will know

087we're successful if we see these outcomes at the end of implementation. And what you're naming is a really great example of what are the specific data sources we might look at consistently to progress monitor implementation and ultimately measure impact. Making sure that we're seeing gaps close among different subopuls when we talk about all students achieving high levels of academic success. And so those impact metrics will be something that will be really important for the implementation of this plan. Uh one want to give Sarah a little bit of a break here and an opportunity to chug some water. But I have really appreciated listening to this conversation. Again, your perspective is really important as we ultimately ratify and approve the strategic plan. There were a couple things that I want to call out when you all

088were internalizing and processing these pillars and giving your feedback. One, we heard the importance of measurability. We know that that's important. what you all had shared about making sure that this strategic plan doesn't just live on a shelf but is actually implemented to success completely is in line with our thinking and our methodology and why we hope to build strategic plans that are really responsive based upon the data. Sarah shared a little bit with you about this strategic planning process and all of the feedback that we gathered in order to create this to ensure that it was not the strategic plan of one or a few leaders but really representative of the community that you all serve. And as part of that process, we sought feedback on these pillars and these initiatives along the way.

089We shared these initiatives with you as just additional context in thinking through how do we ultimately achieve that intended impact of those pillars. Miss Davis, you had shared this is great. I love the ideas of these pillars, but ultimately how are we going to implement this and see this through? And that is where these initiatives come in. But we also know that strategic plans need to be responsive and that as time goes on in implementation, you are going to be collecting data, measuring your progress, and some of these initiatives might ultimately change on the way. And so I share that just to say that there's a reason why sometimes districts choose not to include the initiatives in the strategic plan, but really knowing that this these are strategies that they're looking to test out, progress,

090monitor, but the framing of implementation is really critical to success. Strategic plans are not built to the exclusion of everything else. We know that the community will need support in internalizing this and seeing where do all of your different constituents see themselves in the plan. So again, I just want to thank you for the conversation here because this is really helpful even for us as we work with the project team on setting this up for success. >> Thank you Anna. So we've heard a number of really great recommendations around how we can strengthen these pillars. Whether it is strengthening and making definitions more explicit and clear or exactly what Anna was just naming about these initiatives, knowing that these are strategies that we want to pressure test and making sure as we set ourselves up

091to pressure test them, we feel really confident about the intended impact we're going to see as a result. Know as a next step, we're going to take those recommendations and make some updates to the content of this plan so that can be shared back with you. But I do want to make sure we continue to have opportunity to discuss these pillars. If there are additional clarifications and recommendations the board would like to name. So we've had the opportunity so far to talk about two of the four pillars. I want to pause to hear if there's another pillar that would be really valuable for us to have some conversation around. Great. Thank you for taking that informal check, Dr. Turner. I would ask you to do the gradients of agreement again. However, I don't think that

092is the right next step until we make those updates for the clarifications and recommendations that you have shared. And so where I want us to go next is just to recap the takeaways from this conversation. So having walked through the content and development of the strategic plan and having this conversation about input and feedback where we want to go next and based off of the notes that Anna has been taking, we're going to do some work to update the vision based off of what was shared. There's an opportunity for us to work on the definition of excellence in the value section. and then in particular those pieces that we pulled out around those two pillars. Again, as we think about setting ourselves up for a really successful launch. And so what I want to share

093here is just that preview. When we think about the launch of a strategic plan, we know that implementation is a multi-year process. And so often for districts, we frame this as what you might be prioritizing in each of those years. often districts implement a strategic plan on a five-year cycle. And so where we are going into the spring and then into next school year is thinking about this idea of alignment. So exactly what Anna was saying, there are many things that will continue as they are when we think about strengths and initiatives that already exist within Dothan City Schools. And the strategic plan is also committing us to a very clear and prioritized pathway to excellence. And that's where we want to make sure we prioritize alignment. So what pieces of our strategic plan are

094new? What are details that we want to continue to define as Dr. Jones was naming? What are those specific metrics that we want to make sure we're consistently monitoring to make sure we're getting the information we need to know that we're on a pathway to success? And that leads us into our second year around acclamation. Again, with those initiatives that we did some previewing of, we have some really strong ideas and strategies that we want to test out. And we want to make sure we're consistently progress monitoring and collecting that data so that we feel confident about those indicators of success so that we can continue to scale and implement these initiatives across the district entirely. That leads you to year three and year four where we're thinking about refinement and sustainability. What are you

095going to refine around these pillars and initiatives based off of the success you've seen? And then year four, sustaining that success. making sure with that good thing that you have going, you have the systems and structures to maintain it in perpetuity so that as we move into the last year of implementation, we're back at that envisioning place like we were at the beginning of this cycle. Where do we want to go next? What's the next frontier for Dothan City Schools based off of the success of the implementation of this strategic plan? We've included in here the initiatives for all the pillars. Again, knowing that this is something that we need to pressure test, that we need to start to implement to know if these are the right actions that allow us to be able to

096see the intended impact for these priority areas that have been affirmed by the community. And so again, treat these initiatives as recommendations, but not ones that are set into stone because we need to do some additional testing and make sure we're staying really close to monitoring our data to know that this is the pathway to success. So I want to give you a c chance just to look at those initiatives we looked at for promoting mental health and social emotional learning and academic excellence for lifelong success. But I'll give you a chance to look at that for collaborative leadership and connected community as well. And then I'll show for our fourth pillar that we didn't have a chance to look at, pathways to purpose and career readiness. Those proposed initiatives So again the framing behind

097these initiatives is that they are not final. These are things that we want to test out to know that these are the correct strategies. And so with that, I do just want to open the floor if there are clarifying questions that you have around these initiatives just so that we can take that in consideration with feedback on the career tech. Uh I would really like to see something. I don't know what verbiage it would be. This is all too many words to me, but uh any statement that said it's not going to be a dumping ground, it's not just going to be where you just send kids to get a credential somewhere. It's going it needs to be kids that want to be there, >> uh not just a study hall. >> Yep. So, making

098sure that career connected learning is really the emphasis there. >> Yes. >> Thank you. So, I'll go ahead and say this because I know there's a few people going, "Is she going to say it? Is she going to say it?" And I am. There's a little bit of irony here on the the first page about um unifying communication and con increasing communication with families. Um the steering committee for this had a marketked lack of parents on it. We had people who were parents but also work for Dothan City Schools. There was only one parent on this steering committee who is not an employee of Daythan City Schools and I believe she worked for a vendor of Dothan City Schools. So we have got to include parents in this communication process and that's what's lacking from

099this whole plan from the whole steering committee. I know we sent out the surveys, but also the irony is um that the responses you got say that the communication is good. Well, they received the communication about the surveys. We have a whole another thousands of parents out there that have no idea about this survey and never heard of it and >> have never laid eyes on it. So, um, we have got to find a better way >> to be inclusive of our families in the school system. >> Thank you for naming that. And I think that continues to underscore why something like collaborative leadership and connected community is so important and the pillar that you see listed first. And especially as we think about these initiatives, knowing that we want to pressure test them as

100we move into implementation, making sure exactly what you're naming. We did community engagement to lead to the creation of this plan. And for implementation to be successful, that needs to be a continuous cycle of feedback. And there's an opportunity to make sure we're continuing to cast as wide of a net as possible so that as we implement, we feel confident that these strategies are the ones that are meeting our exact needs. So, thank you. >> And I just wanted to add a point of clarification. And I know I came in on the tail end, but I was a parent that's not um an employee of Dothan City. And I know Ari, I believe you were on multiple. Um so there were more than one parents, but you know, I guess to Ashley's point, we definitely

101want to, you know, ensure that we're engaging families >> and that goes back to the values that we're ratifying and adopting with the strategic plan of how that is showing up in guiding decision- making. So to close out now that we've had this opportunity to walk through the content of the plan, have conversation about input and feedback to make sure our clarifications and recommendations were accurately captured. Again, want to speak to some of the components of implementation that are really essential for it to be successful. So we know teaming, communication, and progress monitoring are really the cornerstones of successful implementation. And everything that we just spoke to, I think really emphasizes why communication is at the center of that. Making sure that we are consistently involving the community and different stakeholders across the community to

102make sure as we implement this strategic plan, it is that two-way conversation and dialogue that helps to support teaming. Do we have the right people involved at different times and in different ways with implementation? And then progress monitoring. Are we looking at the right data at the right time to know that we are on that pathway to continuous improvement? And so with that said, because we started with a check-in, I would like to end with a check out. And so my question is, what is one word to describe how you are feeling after reviewing and having this conversation about the proposed strategic plan? One word. You can get away with hyphenating if you need to, but one word that captures how you are feeling. And when you're ready, Dr. Turner, we'll start with you. Will

103you start with me? >> Yes, we can do that. [laughter] >> Incomplete. Thank you. >> I'll go next. Hopeful. You took my word. Sorry. [laughter] Okay. Uh, wow. Got to think of another word now. Um, >> hopeful plus. [laughter] Yeah. cautiously hopeful. >> Thank you. >> Sleepy. >> Thank you for this. >> We had to sit too long. >> Sorry. Say that again. >> We had to sit too long. So, I really like Dr. Jones's word of incomplete. So, I'm gonna uh give a synonym and say partial. >> Thank you. >> My word's kind of more than one, but it's progressive. We're on the right track, >> just not quite there yet. >> Thank you. So that covers everything that we wanted to walk through in our conversation today. So Dr. Turner, Dr. Ascu, any

104closing remarks before we end our time. >> Just want to thank you for coming out and presenting to the board today and those who are in attendance. Um I'll share my word too. Encouraged. Yes. >> Um I think definitely we're on the right track. More work to do. Um but definitely a good base to start from. So thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> All right. Um is there any new business? Okay. So, if there is no new business, then I um motion to adjourn. Uh, madame chair, I move that we adjourn this meeting. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Yay. >> All right. Um, we will have a regular the motion passes that we adjourn. >> Okay. Okay.

105>> She attached to