Pickens School Board Puts Long-Range Plan Into Policy

Dragon's Corner, Featured Stories

A county-wide strategic improvement plan put into motion in the past is now policy after a lengthy inception, multiple meetings and planning sessions, presentation to the Board of Education and final board approval Monday night.This plan is developed to increase the overall effectiveness of the school system, in a myriad of areas. As stated in the plan, the goals and objectives are to educate students and to communicate high expectations for academic performance; to educate in a safe, nurturing and orderly environment; to provide opportunity for stakeholders to demonstrate a sense of ownership and responsibility for student success; to be fiscally responsible; and finally, to improve communication with all stakeholders.

The process goes back to 2009 with a visit from SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) when a need for a continuous improvement plan was recognized. Former Superintendent Dr. Ben Desper set a plan in motion that has stretched through today and the now-adopted plan that is being carried through by current Superintendent Dr. Lula Perry.

This plan, to be revisited and tweaked yearly, will provide a basis by which all departments and aspects of the school district may realize improvements. It involves a cycle that answers the following questions: Who are we?; Where are we now?; Where do we want to go?; How will we know when we have arrived?; and How do we plan to get there?

The process has included surveys providing the community, parents, staff and students a voice in the process, a diverse planning team, a facilitated planning process and work with experts within the district to develop initiatives and action steps to implementation.

The planning process was lengthy with four phases:

Phase I: Community Engagement –
In the fall of 2011 this phase started with the initial surveys to garner ideas from a variety of sources as to a definitive direction. The next step in this phase was the formation of a committee of 33 people to begin the outlining process quickly followed by the institution of four smaller “action” teams. Those teams reviewed the goals and performance objectives and further developed the plan.

Phase II: Report to the Board of Education –
In July 2012, the initial plan was presented to the board for the plan to be approved and set to action. This plan includes a five-year strategy for the years 2012-2017 and includes initiatives inclusive of the board, district, schools and community.

Phase III: Alignment –
A continual process by which the program is aligned with the budgets of the schools and district. It also guides leader evaluation and individual school improvement plans which strive with the district-wide plan as a final objective.

Phase IV: Implementation, Monitoring and Reporting –
Putting the plan and all it’s sub-plans into policy and moving forward towards goals.

The overall goal areas and performance objectives include student achievement, stakeholder involvement, organizational growth and improvement and internal processes.

The planning process included the recognition of areas of strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses of Pickens County Schools were listed as MS writing; math; science, social studies, special education, economically disadvantaged and decline as students move up grade levels. However, several strengths were also highlighted: SAT scores, reading/ELA (English Language Arts), graduation rate, attendance, AYP (Annual Yearly Progress), high school scores and CRCT (Criterion-Referenced Competency Test) score improvement.

As a component of the overall plan, the board also approved a comprehensive communication plan. The stated purpose is to provide a clear framework for communicating with all stakeholders. Persons involved in the creation of the communication plan included system employees, school council members, business/community partners, parents, students and board members.

The goal of the communication plan is a reciprocal communication avenue between the Board of Education, administrators, staff, students, parents and all external stakeholders. To reach this final goal, the plan addresses the identification and utilization of community resources, fostering positive relationships and providing opportunity for stakeholder education and communication.

In the area of identification and utilization of community resources, a workshop was held recently. Please see the following link for information on that workshop.

https://pickens.fetchyournews.com/archives/3351-Pickens-Schools-Host-Workshop.html

The communication plan is tiered in such a way as to have specific components for each area. As with the strategic plan, the communication plan will be reviewed annually. The communication plan as a whole may be viewed here:

PickensCommunicationPlan.finalPCS1.docx

A report of the achievements of the system has also been compiled for use as a tool and may be viewed here:

Pickensswaggerfinal.docx

The Pickens County Board of Education has links available on their website regarding the SACS accreditation report as well as the entire Strategic Improvement Plan here:

http://www.pickens.k12.ga.us/accreditations.html

Sandy Greene, Director of Teaching and Learning for Pickens Schools, encourages anyone with questions, comments or suggestions regarding the plan or any part of the plan to contact her. She can be reached by email at [email protected].

See the following video for the presentations of the Strategic Improvement Plan and the Communication Plan to the Board of Education at their last meeting

Back to Top