Unit 5 Superintendent Kristen Weikle said it's high time for a refresh of the school district's strategic plan. The current plan came out in 2016, and Unit 5 is in the middle of updating the guide.
Weikle said big chunks of the 2016 plan were never implemented.
“Several things impacted the existing plan not being executed to the level that the board and district would like,” Weikle said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Shortly after it came out, then-superintendent Mark Daniel started to talk about leaving. Weikle had wanted to do a new plan when she arrived in early 2020, but then came the pandemic and two referendum campaigns.
Weikle said the best strategic plans for organizations like Unit 5 have provisions to report out results and hold people accountable for accomplishing goals.
"So far, I haven't seen evidence of that in the previous plan. That is something we'll be sure to include in this new guide for us as a district," said Weikle.
A new look at priorities
School district plans all focus on measuring student accomplishments and charting ways to help kids get better.
"There are also a lot of other things regarding district finances and facilities. What do we want our facilities to look like? What do we want the classroom experience to look like for the students? What sorts of opportunities are we providing that maybe aren't as relevant? Or what are opportunities we're not providing that are really important to our community?” said Weikle.
For instance, are there enough special education classrooms? Do they belong in every school? Are they big enough to handle kids up to age 22, some of whom may have feeding tubes? There are certain buildings that might be the only one at a grade level that provides a certain service. Unit 5 could decide to distribute the service to a number of buildings.
“Maybe one building serves as the English language bilingual program. Maybe we want to expand that to at least two of the four junior highs, or we might hear no, we should have more of that at every junior high,” said Weikle.
With that priority setting comes other decisions about space and staff and the ability to recruit and train staff.
Demographic study
As it sets a new course, Unit 5 also will consider a demographic study on where kids live in the district that is due back in a couple months. That study will offer a snapshot of the makeup of the community.
“Neighborhoods that maybe haven't had school-aged children in them for years," said Weikle. "This study will help identify what neighborhoods are turning over, where more families are moving in with school-aged children or students close to being school age. It lets us know how we need to plan not only from a facility usage standpoint, but from a staffing standpoint.”
That’s particularly important with new residential development scheduled to come online, she said.
“Right now, I'd say it seems like a lot of our buildings are tight on space. But this is part of the process like we're trying to look at, what if we moved, you know, a classroom from here to there? What would that do as far as space and more importantly, meeting student needs?
The demographic study will not be used to redraw school boundaries, but to place services within the existing framework, said Weikle.
“With the exception of these new developments that have been approved in the county, town, and city. In some of those cases, we've made those new developments an open attendance area, meaning we've identified three to four schools their students might attend, depending on enrollment at a school,” she said.
The district already has done a parent survey, Weikle said. And following the first round of community engagement via public forums, the district will have a strategic plan steering committee look at the feedback. Then there will be a follow-up survey and a more narrowly focused public input period.
A draft plan will come out in January, and a final version is likely to go to the school board for action in March.
