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WJCC to Seek Consultants to Develop Strategic PlanBy Amber Lester Kennedy Saturday, April 23, 2011 The Williamsburg-James City County School Board unanimously agreed Tuesday to solicit consultants to help create a strategic plan for the division. Superintendent Steven Constantino recommended the board approve the creation and solicitation of a Request for Proposal (RFP) to provide the school division with consultation in the development of a strategic plan. He suggested the plan should include, but not be limited to: • A strengths-based approach to needs assessment, data gathering and goal construction. • A process and plan to engage employees, students, families, as well as the community to identify opportunities and provide input into goals that will move the division toward their vision of becoming the premier school division in Virginia. • A process and plan to collect and distill information gleaned from internal and external constituencies. • A process and plan to create final strategic goal statements, objectives and metrics. The school board took its first steps toward developing a strategic plan when it drafted a list of 11 goals in September 2010. Now, the board wants to develop a division-wide strategic plan that will establish goals and objectives for a 3-to-5-year period and create a process of “continuous improvement” by establishing metrics to measure achievement of those goals. Constantino recommended using an outside consultant in order to ensure all opinions and ideas are heard and incorporated into the strategic plan. Policy directs the superintendent to acquire sealed bids on contracts in excess of $50,000, but he had no estimate for the cost of the project. Those figures will be included in the proposals from prospective consultants. He said starting the process now and using an outside consultant will make it easier for the community to participate. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right,” he said. “Let’s take our time and engage the community so we can have a document the community can stand behind.”
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Comments
1. Creating a strategic plan.
2. Getting some extra help to get more community input and a state of the art plan.
Bad
1. Calling the help, consultants. Instead call them temporary pro-community expert staff. Say they will provide planning expertise, balance and play devil's advocate to the board and permanent staff. That seems the intent so don't even have to lie on this one.
Send my standard fee.
A strengths-based approach to needs assessment, data gathering and goal construction.
Or this:
A process and plan to collect and distill information gleaned from internal and external constituencies.
On another note, will we ever see the results of the online survey that parents of children in the WJCC School System participated in earlier this year.
Students' intellectual, psychological and future oriented needs and methods to meet them, should be the main consideration of the community. Jumping to conclusions and name calling demonstrate the lack of respect for those in whom we entrust our children's future role models that quality which inhibits learning.
The posts here also exhibit bullying, which most caring communities would like to exclude on the path to good education. Let the man do the job for which he was hired, for heaven's sake and when he says outside help is needed, know that it is the result of careful, fact based and resourceful scrutiny of the situation. He should be commended for the courage he had to say that others are needed to examine and treat problems that inhibit educational aims, that need resolution so that students can reach their potential.
Having a Stategic plan that place students first would be refreshing. WE just have to hold the Board responsible for the implementation and accountablity of administration and staff, or change the Board.
Four seats will be vacant with the new redistricting so we can make the changes to the Board we need.
These are dedicated professionals on the frontline of education. Many hold advanced degrees, some have National Board Certification. Thankfully the vast majority are in tune with what is happening in their classrooms and their students' needs, not bogged down in consultant mumbo-jumbo.
And to Kate Chase...It seems school divisions still find money for ridiculous expenditures on consultants, etc.; even when their budgets are slashed. They take the money from teachers and students....so, that thought probably isn't the best.
Other school districts I've lived in haven't brought in consultants immediately after they've been hired. And abrogating the proposed cost of the study to the proposers sounds like a really bad idea.
But, you know, if the superintendent needs to find cover behind a consultant's study, then maybe the wrong superintendent was hired.