Public input to be sought in strategic planning process.
Community High School District 99 will seek the opinions of community members, parents, business owners, students, teachers and staff as part of its strategic planning process, which will be launched this summer.
The key tool in gathering data will be focus groups, organized for North High constituents, South High constituents, District staff and community members. To keep the number of each focus group to 8-12, members will be invited to participate. In addition, all community members will have an opportunity to provide comments online. In total, more than 20 different focus groups will be held. Interviews with Board of Education members will also be included.
At first blush it appears to be a similar approach to the charettes used by the village in the past. Interesting spin: the participants will be invited to attend. Just a guess but I doubt EJ or myself will need to set aside time, despite the in-depth reporting and analysis of 99 that has appeared here at DGreport.
Phase I is listening to the input. Phase II will analyze the data and use it accordingly. The results will be presented at a January 10, 2011 BOE retreat. It has not been noted if the planned retreat will be open to the public, but it’s almost guaranteed, given 99BOE’s habit of hiding behind closed doors that a meeting of this importance will not be taped or recorded.
There, the Board will review its mission statement, create a vision statement and develop an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, known as a SWOT analysis. Also at the retreat, the Board will set short and long-term goals and prioritize them.
Once goals are set, the third phase of the plan will be put into action: The implementation phase. An action plan, including assignments for implementing the work and scheduling will be developed.
Facilitating the process will be Dr. Gregory Kuhn, assistant director of public management and training at Northern Illinois University’s Center for Governmental Studies. One of the District’s goals is to replicate the process in the future with District 99 administrators.
Given the dizzying pace of state fiscal erosion and what a deadbeat non-payer the state has become, and given the strained budgets of local taxpayers and the flattened growth of tax receipts, strategic planning is a good idea. Even better, getting outside input to the process is commendable.
Hopefully the people involved will read over the input on schools compiled through TCD3, the huge database of public input available in the village website.
I am sure they are going to take input! Right…and monkeys might fly outta my butt.