Strategy Overview (20 minutes)

Transcript (~7 min @ 59:05)

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▶ 59:04 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: opportunity next on our agenda is the policy and planning subcommittee first on that subcommittee is the strategy overview and I will invite the the superintendent to give a very brief history.

▶ 59:19 Speaker 1: Will you like to talk about it? I do. And you're proud of it, so I'm encouraging you to be concise.

▶ 59:24 Speaker 2: So you have the old-fashioned version. I usually, I had converted to giving you a link on the website, but Jamie McAllister-Gran liked the multicolored version, and so did Mr. O'Connell, so I brought it back. And so basically, the history of a strategy overview this I'd say about eight nine years ago on the state took an active interest in how superintendents get trained and they partnered with MASS my professional association and Harvard University and created a training program that many of us now have gone through and one of the things that you come out of that program with is an approach to strategic planning so that you can control your resources you can control how much work you're trying to focus on and you can set priorities and this is our fifth iteration of it because it builds on previous versions it builds on work accomplished it takes into account where new challenges come into play competency-based education being one that came into play two years ago social-emotional learning about four years ago and every year a team of teachers administrators and I meet in late June early July and review the work we've accomplished for the year and we set goals for this new year the goals are aligned with the district's goals that we'll talk about next week when we do the budget narrative next meeting this is not this is based on a lot of input we do a number of surveys during the year we do a tech survey with our staff we do a PD survey with our staff like most districts we are constantly collecting data on our children we do beginning of the year middle of the year end of the year progress monitoring there's classroom visits there's team walkthroughs and we keep reporting out to you how we're progressing against our priorities so that you know the work that's being done I think it mr. mr. O'Connell is the one who had an aha moment a couple of years ago and said this is basically everything you do on a daily basis and I said beyond the regulatory stuff yes it is this is the teaching and learning that we care about the most so interesting enough this summer and you can go back on the website and look at previous ones interesting enough at this summer when we met the content facilitators the elementary instructional leaders are in the room the educational team facilitators the SPED people are in the room all the administrators this year I had a couple of teachers say to me can I just sit in and I said sure why not I will as an aside they're working on their PhDs and

▶ 1:02:34 Speaker 2: so it was the teachers that said to me can you step back and rethink the priorities we think that we've been doing this long enough as a district that our original priorities were planning curriculum and content instructional strategies assessment the four cornerstones of any good

▶ 1:02:56 Speaker 2: instruction and they said would you consider aligning your priorities with the teachers evaluation rubric and I said make a case to me and they said we want teachers to clearly understand the connection between what we're working on and how they're going to be evaluated on implementing that work so it's not a

▶ 1:03:20 Speaker 2: a one-to-one correlation with the rubric but it's pretty close those of you who have been subjected to the rubric or use the rubric and there's what three of us in the room you know you see curriculum planning and assessment teaching all students responsive and inclusive environments which is basically an indicator not a standard on the rubric and professional culture and community engagement so with their input we shifted our objectives and then after that we went on and we revised or added new priorities the priorities are in black the work that's been done to date is in red so we updated three times a

▶ 1:04:08 Speaker 2: year agenda right right September mid-year and then towards the end of the

▶ 1:04:14 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: year we'll do it again questions for the superintendent mr. o'connor so I think I

▶ 1:04:16 Speaker 4: actually once that I hated this document and I was sitting next to you madam superintendent and you you bristled at that and rightly so I hated it because I didn't understand it and I think I do now so there's a little bit of progress there in this document it's worth noting is really more about you and your work it doesn't ask us necessarily for a vote it's not so much informative but it's a record of what you're doing so I'm happy to say that I love this document it makes sense to me love after all it's a much different perspective right love will keep us together a couple of things I wanted to do a couple of things I wanted to note I'm heartened to see that the Humanities Department is taking up the cause of the civics requirement that's coming down the road I think that's great, needed, necessary, appropriate, prudent, and all around right thing to do. The other thing I would just comment on briefly, also heartened to see the references to restorative justice. This is another thing I think like competency-based education that we have been out in front of and leading on. And now at every turn in education and elsewhere we read about restorative justice as the way things are done as the wave of the future and we have been doing it for a while mr. Asia in fact has been at the forefront of this so I think all good stuff thank you for that further