Denise Fredrick, president of the Springfield Public Schools board, began the segment of Tuesday’s meeting dedicated to discussing and revising the latest draft of the district’s strategic plan with something of an understatement.
“We’ve got work to do here,” she said. After nearly two hours of suggested revisions —and revisions to the revisions later — that work wrapped up for the night.
A school district’s strategic plan states its priorities and goals, and how the district intends to achieve them. In the case of a Missouri school district, a version of that plan also must be tailored to address standards mandated by the latest iteration of the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP 6). With the district’s MSIP 6 filing due next month, the board has a deadline to meet.
On Tuesday night, the six present members of the seven-member board combed through the language of a proposed draft of the strategic plan.
The draft, which was not included in the public agenda, built upon an initial draft published in mid-November, when the board was presented with the findings of a survey of thousands of staff members, parents, high school students and other community members.
Among the themes that emerged from those surveys were: a review of district leadership structure; a focus on academic improvement; the inclusion of real-world learning skills in curriculum; continued improvement of campus safety; and needed improvement regarding employee recruitment and retention.
As drafted, the district’s new strategic plan will address agreed-upon topics through a series of governing priorities that align with a new SPS mission statement.
That appeared close to finalized Tuesday night. Much of the rest remained a work in progress.
Academic opportunities focus of possible middle ground on new mission statement
The current strategic plan mission statement reads:
Prepare all students for tomorrow by providing engaging, relevant and personalized educational experiences today.
On Tuesday, Superintendent Grenita Lathan presented a proposed revised mission statement based off of board discussions as well as rounds of feedback from thousands across the district. It read:
Springfield Public Schools is committed to the academic preparation and well-being of each student.
Referencing emailed feedback from board members, Lathan said there was consensus around the academic component of the mission statement.
“Some board members struggled with well-being because they thought it was beyond, that we were doing something beyond our academic purpose,” Lathan said.
Board member Kelly Byrne said he wasn’t a fan of the term being in the mission statement. “In my view, we should be singularly focused on the mission of the most important goal and to not throw anything else in there that doesn’t have a better place further down in the plan,” Byrne said. “To me, it’s focusing on academics.”
Maryam Mohammadkhani, the board’s vice president, said the inclusion of the well-being term could give the impression that the district is trying to usurp parents’ roles in raising their children. Byrne also advocated for phrasing centered around providing academic opportunity for each individual student.
Board member Danielle Kincaid said the district should be focused on the well-being of students in order to support their academic success.
“A student who is hungry isn’t going to learn well,” she said. “A student who isn’t safe and secure in their classroom is not going to learn well.”
Board member Shurita Thomas-Tate said a focus on well-being works hand in hand with a focus on academic preparation. While saying she was open to tweaking the language around preparation, she said she was married to including well-being in the mission statement.
The board came to a consensus around a statement suggested by Lathan:
Springfield Public Schools is committed to the well-being of each student by providing high-quality academic opportunities.
Possible vision statement: helping each student ‘pursue their goals'
The current SPS vision statement is:
Serve as a catalyst for lifelong learning, equipping students for their futures.
The district’s proposed revision stated:
Springfield Public Schools will be the district of choice that equips students to be informed, empowered and engaged contributors to society.
The second half of the vision statement drew concern from some board members Tuesday night. Mohammadkhani said she worried it could be interpreted as “social engineering of kids.”
“Empowering is being prepared so that they can achieve whatever they want, but I just worry how that comes across without having a definition,” she said.
Thomas-Tate said she appreciated the use of empowered, because it could connect with students who fall outside of the mainstream college-bound category.
“When my students who I work with in special education are empowered, they have the ability to communicate effectively by whatever means that is possible,” she said. “When I say ‘empowered,’ it provides them to have voice. For me, literacy is empowered. If you can read, you are empowered. For me, that word empowered deals with not just making them, you know, social justice warriors. That’s not the way that I meant it. It means that we are giving them the skills that are going to make them successful in life.”
Byrne said he agrees with Thomas-Tate’s interpretation, but said the language of the statement needed to be more specific.
“I think we can be more clear about what we’re saying here, because there are dictators that were empowered,” he said. “I think that there’s something that needs to be a little more specific about what our vision is for these students beyond the broadness of that term.”
Several rounds of debate brought the board to agreement on this revision:
Springfield Public Schools will be the district of choice that equips each student to pursue their goals and highest potential as engaged contributors to society.
Board members still have some time to suggest tweaks to that and any other language included in the strategic plan. The members will meet for a special workshop session on Dec. 6 that is dedicated entirely to the strategic plan process. The language ironed out during that session will be voted on Dec. 13, just in time for staff to submit a version of it with the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
