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Superintendent
Overview of the Strategic Planning
Process
The
Once complete, the strategic plan will identify goals,
strategies, and specific actions to assist in guiding the district in
accomplishing its mission, fulfilling its obligations and even, realizing its
vision.
The strategic plan will provide a district-specific
blueprint for an integrated, coordinated, and streamlined approach to focusing
the efforts of the schools over the next three to five years.
Why a Strategic Plan?
Planning and goal-setting are essential to keeping a school
system (and any organization) moving forward and improving. All would
agree that the focus of every school district should be on teaching and
learning; however, the demands of budget, personnel, facilities, and state
requirements can easily overwhelm a system. A Strategic Plan is a
powerful tool in maintaining focus through the many challenges faced by school
systems. An effective Strategic Plan can also improve internal and
external communications and lead to increased teamwork as system-wide goals are
pursued.
The Planning Process
The Superintendent's office will coordinate the planning
process with support from Future Management Systems, Inc. (FMS); a major goal
of the process is that a wide variety of stakeholders be involved in the formulation
of the plan. The planning process is scheduled to be complete by the end
of February 2004.
Steps in Strategic
Planning Process:
1. Organize
Steering Committee with representatives from the school district and the community.
2. Conduct
internal analysis; external analysis
3. Conduct
focus groups review District beliefs (core values), mission, and goals.
4. Superintendent
develops Vision Statement that accurately reflects what the District wants to
be like in five years.
5. Superintendent,
Steering Committee,
6. Steering
Committee identifies the themes that emerged from the data collection and
develop Strategic Priorities
and Goals. For each of the themes identified, the Steering Committee and Leadership Team will develop Action Plans which
include list goals and strategies to provide direction
for organizational improvement and growth.
7.
8.
9.
An early step in the process involves collecting and
analyzing internal and external data.
Part of this involves running numerous Focus Groups to hear
directly from interested parties their concerns and issues with the schools. To
that end, he HW School District has organized Focus Groups for the following
groups:
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HW
High school students
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HWRSD
parents
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HWRSD
faculty
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HWRSD
support staff
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HWRSD
leadership team
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HWRSD
school committee
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Business,
civic, and community organizations
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Non-school
connected taxpayers
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Senior
citizens
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Hamilton
& Wenham Selectmen & Finance
Committee members
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§
Headmasters
of area independent schools
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State
senator and state representative
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Education
and human services organizations
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Editors
of HW Chronicle and
All of the information from these efforts will be considered
and discussed, then used to formulate Goals and Strategies for the early
versions of the plan.
Participants
in the Strategic Planning Process
Ř Steering Committee: Role of the
steering committee is to review draft planning documents, identify
stakeholders, process findings, and provide input at every step of the process.
The steering committee includes: (a) parent from each level,
(b) teacher from each level, (c) principal or assistant principal from each
level, (d) community representative from each community, (e) two school
committee members, and (f) superintendent.
The steering committee identifies the themes and develops
the goals and strategies so the HW Leadership Team can develop the Action
Plans. The Steering Committee does this by analyzing the data collected from
the focus groups and interviews. From the analysis, the Steering Committee
identifies themes and develops accompanying goals and strategies for each
theme. For each theme, goal and strategy, the Leadership Team will develop an
Action Plan. The Action Plan will include strategies, actions, timeframes, team
leaders and members, and measures of success for each strategy.
The Action Plan defines the next steps to meet the plan’s
priorities, including specific initiatives, or actions, measures of success,
timeframes and teams or leaders responsible for each effort. Measures of
success and specified timeframes define targets for improvement and benchmarks
for monitoring and adjusting strategies to meet those targets.
The Action Plans comprise the Strategic Plan that will
provide the District with a well-defined and easily implemented system for
accountability, measuring outcomes, and evaluating progress. The Action Plans
are essentially the blueprint or work plan for the efforts that will occur
during the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
The School Committee, Superintendent,
The strategic plan will be re-evaluated on a consistent
basis, with flexibility for modifications at predictable intervals.
For More
Information
Contact Catherine A. Harrison, School Committee Chairperson
or Dr.