District Strategic Plan Coming Together

Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
The Kodiak Island Borough School district will hold its third and final strategic education plan meeting tonight. Superintendent Steward McDonald said the meetings are an important part of drafting the district’s strategic education plan, a process that began in the early 1990s and takes place every year.
“If we were to look at our budget development hand book you would see that every year begins with a needs assessment, and after the needs assessment is completed where we look at all of our data then we come together and we look at all of our education plans, and we have many, we call them our blue print," he said. "And then we take all of those ideas, and there are many, and we bring the community together and we take a look at what are the local priorities and how do we strategically focus on a few things to move forward. Once that is established, strategic planning, the board will review it, shape it with some of their own goals and that becomes the basis of all of our budget planning for fiscal year 2014.”

Assistant Superintendent Marilyn Davidson is in charge of the planning process this year and said the meetings have been an excellent opportunity for community members from different backgrounds and entities to collaborate on ways the school district can improve.
“So representatives from different ethnic and cultural communities, the college, the science community, the workforce community, a broad group of people that have come together. The Coast Guard has representation at the table, the schools, who their parent teacher associations," Davidson said. "The people who are not at the table specifically are the district people. District people who are in these meetings are listening, they’re at the side, they are hearing what the community is saying and that’s really the first step in this is to listen to what the community is saying.”

Davidson said the meeting last week generated some strategy ideas and the hope is that tonight’s meeting will provide a planning draft that can be presented to the board of education and move onto budgeting.

— (Strategic Planning 3 :27 “I would say that the big ideas that come through are academics, activities, school climate, community partnership. Those are really the big four themes that are going on. When the committee last week drafted their ideas they put them into four categories, they saw four categories emerging. In the classroom, in the school, in the district and in the community, so it’s kind of an ever increasing circle of influence that we’re seeing in the planning strategies.”)

The meeting will take place at 6 p.m. tonight in the school district conference room. Community members are welcome and encouraged to attend the meetings or provide their input in a short online survey. That survey, which Davidson said provides ample room for narrative comments, can be found on the district’s homepage at K-I-B-S-D dot org. She said you can also call the district offices and speak with her or Superintendent McDonald at any time. She said surveys and comments that are received before this afternoon will be shared with committee members during tonight’s meeting.