Linda Dawson is IASB director/ editorial services and editor of The Illinois School Board Journal.
Superintendent Jeff Holmes was convinced that just one site would be best suited for a new elementary school in Clinton CUSD 15. But he had no intention of telling his board and members of the community which one of the several sites being discussed he preferred. Holmes wanted people to come to that conclusion on their own.
And he was pretty confident they would, given the chance.
So the superintendent sat in the back of the room as 12 tables of community members, school staff and board members worked with members of a St. Louis-based strategic planning firm to come up with their choice of a site for the new building.
“The vote wasn’t even close,” Holmes said. “They came up with my choice on their own.”
How can a superintendent be so certain of a community’s choice before it’s made? Because he, the school board and his staff had been using strategic planning and community engagement for five years to get student achievement in the forefront of everything the district does.
In 2006, the Clinton board did a self-evaluation as a part of IASB’s Targeting Achievement through Governance program. Holmes had been in Clinton for two years, and the school board seemed solidly focused on financial issues.
It was an eye-opening experience, Holmes said. “It unified the board and made them realize that they first needed to do the best for kids.” Out of the self-evaluation also came the realization that the board needed to have a long-term plan in place.
“Clinton approached me for a goal-setting session, and at first I didn’t connect it with the idea that it led to strategic planning … but it did,” said Larry Dirks, field services director for IASB’s Abe Lincoln division.
So, even though some board members had reservations, the district invited community members to a planning session. Fewer than 10 people from the community showed up. But it got the conversation started.
Since that first session five years ago, the district has updated its plan each year, preparing and mailing information to everyone in the district, as well as making the updates available at the Chamber of Commerce and through local real estate agencies.
Getting them to come
Early on, Holmes said, board members felt they did not have a good cross-section of the community. To remedy that, he asked his six building principals to recruit people and invite them to a night of engagement.
“We had a better mix of buildings,” Holmes said, “but we still need more of those with no children in the school system … or the single mom who works at Casey’s.”
To help attract people to the strategic planning session, the district created a catch phrase and a logo: Building 4 our Future. The district website offered the following invitation:
“We want your input into the types of spaces that you would like to see in the new building. Do you want the building to have a lot of natural light? Should we have more than one gym? Should there be a stage? How much space should be designed for community use when school is not in session? These and many other questions will be up for discussion on Tuesday evening and we want your input.”
Community members were encouraged to bring their children, because the district wanted their input as well for what they would like to see in a new building. And for those too young to offer an opinion, the district offered child care during the meeting.
“Come share our ideas and get the scoop!” the website said. Attendees were offered ice cream in addition to information.
Keeping it going
At the initial strategic planning session with IASB, board members, administrators, staff and the community were not exactly certain what they were getting into.
“It’s like a ‘dark room’ syndrome,” Holmes said. “If you don’t know what’s there and it’s dark, then you tend to fill it up with bad stuff. Now we all see where we need to go and we all have a hand in how we are going to get there.”
Strategic planning also carries specific benefits for a superintendent.
“As a superintendent, this provides me with direction,” Holmes said. The goals, as set by the board and the community, serve as a road map. “There are no guessing games. By following the road map, I fulfill the needs of the community, the staff and the board.”
The direction he gets from the strategic plan also helps him feel more efficient.
“Without the plan, I would have been working, but not to the best of my ability and capabilities,” he said.
Having a plan also helps with divvying up work. Each of the district’s principals is responsible for one of the plan goals, and business manager Rick Imig, who retired this summer, had been responsible for the financial piece.
“People are still really energized about the process,” Holmes said. And, after five years, the culture in the district has changed. The community now expects to have input in district conversations and to get information back from the district to see how their ideas have had an impact.
The shift in the district discussions has become obvious.
During the first strategic planning session, because there were only 10 community members present, everyone worked together on all the planning areas, Holmes said. The second year participants were allowed to select their own area of interest, and the majority of people wanted to talk about finances.
At last October’s meeting, Holmes said, “no one wanted to go to finance. Everyone wanted to go to student achievement.”
Now that the district is more comfortable with the process, it is able to facilitate the strategic planning process itself. Holmes and his board members also have answered questions for other districts and have participated in two panel presentations at the IASB/IASA/IASBO Joint Annual Conference in Chicago: once when they had just started the process and again in 2010 when they explained how the process can continue.
Dirks compares it to the old adage about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish. “Once you learn the process, you can facilitate it on your own,” he said.
Dirks and the other five IASB field service directors routinely conduct workshops with boards to set district goals. These workshops often include a community group with the intention to embed a process into the district culture similar to the positive experience in Clinton.
Room for improvement in the process still exists. Although they provide mailings, post the goals on the website and have them available for the community at various locations, Holmes said he sometimes feels they don’t do a good enough job letting everyone know when various aspects of the goals have been completed.
If the plan is to serve as a dashboard for the community, then all the readings need to be kept up-to-date.
“The beauty of this is that I know when I retire, this process will continue,” Holmes said. And that’s a legacy he’ll be proud to leave.