Strategic Objectives for FY10
by Tom Mulligan
November 11, 2009
The Riverton school board recently approved the district strategic objectives and discussed the district balanced scorecard for the FY 2010 school year. The district strategic planning process starts with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. In this analysis, the strategic planning team reviews a variety of district data on environmental trends, student achievement results (both academic and behavior), demographic data, board initiatives, etc. The team then uses this data to develop the district strategic advantages, which include internal strengths and external opportunities. They also determine the district’s strategic challenges, which are those internal weaknesses and external pressures that provide road blocks for the district in terms of achieving its goals. The list of strategic advantages and strategic challenges can be seen in detail by clicking on the links below. You will notice that when reviewing the strategic advantages document, identified at the bottom of the document are the district’s core competencies. Those are simply the district’s greatest internal strengths.
Once the planning team has determined the strategic advantages and strategic challenges, the team determines the district’s strategic objectives. Those objectives should build upon the strategic advantages and directly address the strategic challenges. This year the district decided that it would develop strategic objectives that were set for five years but with annual achievement targets (these targets can be seen on the balanced scorecard). The strategic objectives are written in such a way that the district has flexibility from year to year to add components to each objective if the data warrants a change. The following section provides a brief description of each objective.
Strategic Objectives #1: District will be “fully implementing” as defined by PBIS by FY14 (and exemplar by the scoring guide, “Phases of Implementation”).
All three buildings in the district use a framework for student behavior called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Strategies (PBIS). The middle school began implementing PBIS in 2001-2002 (9 years), the elementary school in 2003-2004 (7 years) and the high school in 2007-2008 (3 years). The Illinois PBIS Network provides designations as part of their recognition process to schools that are part of the PBIS Network. Over 25% of all Illinois Schools (1,100) are implementing PBIS. The designations they provide are as follows:
- Start-Up:Beginning the process of school-wide PBIS implementation
- Emerging: Building the foundation for school-wide PBIS implementation
- Implementing: Maintaining the school-wide PBIS foundation and building the foundation for Tier2/Secondary Level Interventions.
- Fully Implementing: Sustaining school-wide PBIS implementation, maintaining Tier2/Secondary Level Interventions and building the foundation for Tier3/Tertiary Interventions
- Exemplar: Demonstrating the “ideal model” of building, maintaining and sustaining Tier 1/Universal, Tier 2/Secondary, and Tier 3/Tertiary school-wide PBIS, while maintaining academic integrity
**for more details on PBIS and the designations view the article on the district website on PBIS
Last year, the Riverton Middle School was designated as “Fully Implementing” Schools, Riverton Elementary School was designated as “Implementing,” and Riverton High School was considered “Emerging”.
The district strategic objective states that in five years each building in the district will receive a designation of “fully implementing” from the PBIS network. To achieve this designation, each building must be providing a strong framework for behavior but will also be seeing dramatic results in terms of positive student behavior.
Strategic Objective #2: The district will see an increase in the percent of students meeting and/or exceeding state assessment standards in reading to a level of 84.5% by the end of FY14.
The focus of this goal is to make improvements in student achievement in the area of reading. Currently, students are tested in reading at the state level in grades 3-8 using the Illinois Standardized Achievement Test (ISAT) and in grade 11 using the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). The current level of achievement for the district is 75.11% meeting or exceeding on state assessments. In addition to the state assessments, the district staff will be using a variety of measures to review student performance.
Strategic Objective #3: The district will have engaged stakeholders to a level that allows the district to reach achievement objectives.
The district defines stakeholders as students, parents and the community. For students, engagement can be defined as a commitment, both emotional and intellectual, to reaching their potential. For parents and community, engagement in this context can be defined as a commitment, both emotional and intellectual, to accomplishing the mission, and vision of the school district, which is of course student growth and achievement. This year the district has chosen to focus on the engagement of students. The district will be using a nationally-normed survey in the spring that determines student engagement a variety of areas. The district will use those survey results to drive improvements. The district will also focus on implementing the relationship standards (these can be found on the district website) with students and strengthening students’ involvement in extra-curricular programs in the district. Most importantly, the district will focus on and measure the level of student engagement in the classroom.
Strategic Objective #4: The district will have a skilled and engaged workforce to a level that allows the district to reach achievement objectives.
This strategic objective focuses entirely on the workforce of the district. There are two main parts to this objective. The first is again engagement. There has been a great deal of research recently on the importance of having an engaged workforce. Workforce Engagement is defined in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as “the extent of workforce commitment, both emotional and intellectual, to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization. Organizations with high levels of workforce engagement are often characterized by high-performing work environments in which people are motivated to do their utmost for the benefit of their students and stakeholders and for the success of the organization.”
The second part of this objective calls for a skilled workforce. In this area, the district will be focusing on providing training and measuring staff proficiency in the areas of student behavior and reading instruction since those are the two achievement strategic objectives.
As mentioned earlier, the district uses a balanced scorecard to monitor progress on strategic objectives. To view the district strategic objective, click on the link below. Before viewing, please look over the following explanations for the titles in the scorecard.
- Stakeholders – those groups affected by the objective
- A/C – alignment to the district’s strategic advantages and strategic challenges
- CO – alignment to the district core competencies
- KPI – (Key Performance Measures) those things that are being used to measure growth
- Formative Measure – measures that will be reviewed throughout the year
- Summative Measure – year-end measures
- Target – the annual or five year targets
- Benchmark – the group the district’s results are being compared to (or it could be a comparison against the district prior performance)
Building Level Plans
Following the development of the strategic objectives, each school building develops building level goals and action plans that align to the district strategic objectives. Each building staff will then spend the year implementing those plans and measuring results in an attempt to allow the district to reach its strategic objectives. These plans will soon be posted on each building website.
