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Schools

District 63 Approves New Strategic Plan

It highlights 10 new core values.

East Maine Elementary District 63 has a new blueprint for the coming years after adopting a new strategic plan Sept. 7.

The plan outlines 10 core values that the district will focus on, and more than a dozen action items to carry it forward into the future, according to the presentation by Superintendent Scott Clay.

One thing that will not change is the district’s mission statement, “Empowering all students to succeed in a changing world.”

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“We’ve had the same mission statement for a lot of years,” Clay said. “We thought it really says what we are doing."

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The core values the district will focus on are: teamwork, communication, respect, community, knowledge, integrity, safety, competence, personal growth and achievement, he said.

It will use those values as it moves forward on its action plans, which were developed with the input of focus groups that met last spring. They include:

  • creating a “district data warehouse” by June. This would offer educators the ability to pull together all the information it gets from students' assessments, allowing them to look at an individual child’s progress, or at the progress of each class or school or certain groups of students.
  • working to make sure that the district exceeds state goals for placing students who receive special education services in the least restrictive environment that is appropriate for them by December 2013. That means moving special ed students into mainstream classrooms whenever possible, because research shows that they learn more when they are included with their regular-education peers.
  • by June, establishing a process to make sure the district is consistently implementing the curriculum across the district’s schools and classrooms, so all students get the full benefit of it.
  • developing a long-term plan for the district’s financial stability by June 2013
  • aligning revenues with expenditures each year
  • by June, develop a comprehensive communication plan for the district
  • develop at least seven “meaningful opportunities” for parents and community members to engage with the community or volunteer. The number seven is based on the idea that each school would come up with one opportunity.
  • develop at least seven parent education opportunities for the 2012-13 school year
  • evaluate the ways students, parents and community members interact with the district through technology by June, and come up with a plan to increase those interactions.
  • starting in the 2012-13 school year, replace desktop computers with wireless-enabled mobile devices such as laptops and tablet computers, freeing up physical space and cable capacity in the schools.
  • having each teacher maintain a standardized website by June 2013.
  • complete items from the 2005 life/safety survey by 2015.
  • implement the recommendations of a facilities survey – to be conducted by a professional architect – by 2021.

School board president Jane Wojtkiewicz congratulated Clay on the development of the plan, saying it was exactly what the district was looking for when it hired him three years ago.

“When we talked about what qualities we wanted in a leader, it came up time and time again about improving communication,” she said.

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