Through working together West Clermont now has a common strategic direction for student success and a roadmap developed to get there.
At the September 23, 2019 board meeting, the West Clermont Board of Education unanimously voted to adopt our new strategic direction. Strategic directions are important as they help focus the day-to-day work of everyone within the organization and direct the allocation of resources and spending. When you have a district like ours that spends two thousand dollars per student below the state average and far less than area districts, money is beyond tight, and making sure we are deliberate about resource allocation and our work becomes even more important than ever, perhaps.
Our work involves extensive community input from students, staff, parents, and community members. We are grateful to these individuals for caring so much about our schools to spend their evenings and days understanding our district and educational trends today and what our students face in the future.
This process began months ago with the following question: What do our graduates need to be successful in learning and life? From here, we invited dozens of parent representatives from each school to attend a “Beyond the Brick & Mortar” presentation to discuss our current reality and hopes for the future. Information was then gathered from 14 focus groups comprised of parents, students, staff, and residents, who were asked to respond to questions regarding the strengths of our district and the areas for growth and improvement. The administrative team completed a S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) analysis, a district capacity analysis, and participated in brainstorming sessions.
All of this information was used by the strategic planning team to develop a vision statement, mission statement, and strategic themes to support the aspirational vision of the West Clermont School Board of Education. These concepts were then vetted in a survey with 452 participants, who provided feedback that directly resulted in the creation of our new strategic direction.
Four themes emerged from this information-gathering process, and these themes provide the foundation for the plan:
- Equip and Engage Every Learner
- Grow Academic Achievement and Educational Opportunity
- Embrace Innovative Learning
- Optimize Partnerships & Align Resources
This fall, we will activate our internal teams and engage with partners to work through a deep dive and the finalization of a working, metrics-driven plan for each of the four components. Through this time, I will provide more explanation of each theme and give you a sense of the work that will be completed. Our goal is to be fully prepared to share the comprehensive plan with all of our stakeholders in early 2020.
West Clermont Schools has always been focused on students and their learning experience. As a strategic planning team, we have studied what a modern culture focused on student-centered learning looks like today and into the future. What became very clear in this process is that we must support learner well-being from an intellectual, physical, social, and emotional standpoint in new ways by enhancing the quality of our schools and growing our strategic partnerships. This will better enable us to develop the types of graduates that are needed to thrive in today’s world and tomorrow’s workplace. As an organization, we are committed to establishing high standards for learning that we expect all children to achieve because we believe each and every child can strive and grow.
For more information about the planning process and our strategic plan, please visit our
website: https://www.westcler.k12.oh.us/content/wcsdstrategicplan
Our new vision is “Together as One Community, We LEARN. LEAD. SUCCEED.” And I believe that the success of this process lies in the fact that we did this work together. By committing to this work, we embodied our (new) mission of committing to “excellence with every learner, every day, every way!” I am grateful to the many people who have participated in this process thus far and look forward to what the future has in store for West Clermont!
