Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home School Board last week adopted a new five-year Strategic Plan aimed at improving academic growth in the elementary schools and junior high and the attendance rate at Sweet Home High School.
During the board’s regular meeting on Monday evening, May 7, Supt. Tom Yahraes, with Strategic Planning Committee members Rachel Stucky, Susan Coleman and Ann Knight, presented a draft of the Strategic Plan 2018-23, a simple, single-page document, to the board.
The Strategic Plan’s goal is that all Sweet Home elementary schools and the junior high achieve academic growth ratings of 4 or 5 in language arts and math in the state’s ranking system for its school report cards.
The plan also calls for Sweet Home High School to increase its graduation rate by 5 percent annually and attendance by 1 percent annually over the next five years. Last year, the graduation rate was a little more than 70 percent. Attendance this year is running a little more than 88 percent.
A committee of district administrators, staff, parents and community members began developing the Strategic Plan in late fall, Yahraes said. The district surveyed the community, parents and staff and received more than 1,000 comments.
Stucky, the district’s director of teaching and learning, said the committee read every single comment before creating a rough draft of the plan.
A smaller committee further refined the document and created new vision and mission statements, Yahraes said.
“I believe strongly it accurately reflects the needs and wants stakeholders told us they wanted earlier this year,” Stucky told the School Board.
Knight, who is a math teacher at the high school, said it felt “healthy and refreshing to revisit what we are all about with all of our stakeholders.
“It feels energizing to set new goals, and those goals motivate me as a teacher to work hard to achieve them.”
Coleman, a member of the community, a parent and city council member, said she was “impressed by the forethought and hard work that was given by the school administration to plan community, parent, student and teacher forums, where invested groups gave their input.”
The committee identified four priority areas during the planning process: outstanding achievement, thriving citizens, a thriving community and safe, welcoming facilities and services.
The plan states that the district will begin monitoring thriving citizen and thriving community measurements.
The district’s proposed 2018-19 budget, also presented Monday, ties funding decisions to one or more of the priority areas in the Strategic Plan.
Driving the plan are the district’s vision, mission statement and operational foundation.
The district’s vision statement calls for it to be “a district where each child feels valued, inspired and has a sense of belonging.
Its mission statement is: “Give each child every chance to achieve their potential.”
The operational foundation is to “align and manage our resources thoughtfully and responsible to best serve our students, staff and community.”
Outstanding Achievement
Knight said that Sweet Home has a future teacher attending Linfield College, future engineers at Oregon State University, a future optometrist at Yale University and a master griller about to become a sushi chef at the Gallery Restaurant and the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, along with a diesel mechanic at Sheppard Volkswagen in Eugene and a welding supervisor at West Coast Mechanical.
“For those and the hundreds more current students, we teachers must continue to be diligent in preparing outstanding lessons,” Knight said. “We must continue sharing the employability score data with students and reminding them that good attendance matters, timeliness matters, bringing necessary materials to class matters.”
The district must continue to hire highly trained teachers, provide meaningful professional develop and operate small professional learning communities to discuss specific content and classroom management strategies, Knight said. The district must expand its electives to ensure that the needs of all students are met.
According to the plan, the district will “offer an academically challenging experience, celebrating individual excellence.”
To achieve this, the district will increase success for all students by closing the achievement gap and ensuring students are college- and career-ready.
It will provide instruction, reflecting the best practices and standards alignment.
The district will expand electives, alternative education options and co-curricular programming to ensure that all students’ needs are met.
And it will provide staff with professional development that contributes to the increased instructional effectiveness.
Thriving Citizens
The School District will “champion success, unlocking each student’s full potential,” according to the plan. To meet this goal, the district will “identify the individual strengths of each student so they can develop talents for lifetime learning.”
“Student achievement is like a plant growing in a small cup,” Coleman said. “Sunshine will cause it to grow green and tall. But without being transplanted into the ground in nutrient-rich soil, this plant will grow thin and spindly, not capable of flourishing in outdoor weather.”
The plan focuses purposeful attention on identifying student strengths, developing their talents, promoting their confidence and resiliency, teaching teamwork through sports and activities and cultivating character and healthy lifestyles.
It will cultivate the attributes of character, citizenry, healthy lifestyles, fitness and work habits; and it will be responsive to the unique needs of every student by providing comprehensive service and support.
These “all contribute to growing a citizen who thrives within their community, like all of you,” Coleman said.
Thriving Community
In order to have a thriving community, we need to connect students with local and regional businesses to learn about emerging career options,” Knight said. “The East Linn Pipeline Project is a fabulous mechanism to accomplish this need. It focuses on industry needs and getting our students through the academic pipeline to meet those needs.”
Currently, the district has students job-shadowing professionals, cross-age tutors working with elementary students, welding students participating in competitions, field trips in math to Radiator Supply House and a Career Day in which students hear from a wide variety of employers discussing a wide range of skills, Knight said.
“We do an excellent job already, but we need to continually search for new ideas to expand student work experiences.”
The School District will “promote seamless partnerships in which students, staff and community members feel connected.”
The district will foster volunteer and service opportunities among schools, students and the community; and it will connect students with local businesses to learn about emerging career options and expand student work experiences.
It will ensure effective communications among the school district, schools and families; and it will cultivate positive environments and relationships that contribute to organizational and community wellness.
“Academic achievement is vitally important to a student’s success,” Coleman said. “Teaching a student to be a thriving citizen prepares them to enter adulthood. Yet we must provide opportunities for character, strengths and talents to be put into practice. Otherwise we would be like a farmer growing plants that never produce a crop.
“Students need to know where they can continue to grow. They need to believe they can transition into the community and make a difference when they step out of the safe confines of the school system.”
Safe, Welcoming
Facilities and Services
The School District will provide a learning atmosphere that prepares students for an ever-changing world by establishing a long-term plan that supports continued improvement of the district’s facilities.
The district will improve safety and security by strengthening safety plans, increasing staff training and providing comprehensive oversight.
It will offer welcoming and inspiring facilities, modernize learning environments and increase access to updated technology.
“Considering our bond work, this quadrant (of the plan) has been a primary focus of the board,” Yahraes said. The district wants to continue to focus on making its facilities safe, secure and inviting.
Going forward, the board will hold a work session in August to develop plans based on the Strategic Plan, Yahraes said. The schools and departments will create performance plans with timelines and assignments with ways to measure success.
Attending the board meeting Monday were Jim Gourley, Ben Emmert, Jason Redick, Chairman Mike Reynolds, Angela Clegg and Debra Brown. Absent were Jason Van Eck, Chanz Keeney and Carol Babcock.
In other business:
– Yahraes and Maintenance Supervisor Josh Darwood recommended using Gerding Builders as the construction manager-general contractor for the junior high remodel.
A “protest period” ends Thursday at 5 p.m. The board will begin a meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday to consider whether to contract with Gerding. The meeting is open to the public and located in the Board Room at the Central Office.
For more information, call the superintendent’s office at (541) 367-7126.
– The board accepted the resignation of Emmert from the board. His wife is graduating from medical school will begin a residency program in Omaha, Neb.
For more information, call the superintendent’s office at (541) 367-7126. The position is open to residents of the Liberty area.