With input coming from students, parents, teachers, support staff and management, the Vernon School District’s strategic plan is well under way.
The Vision 2022 project launched last month is a five-year strategic plan process that invites everyone in the community to take a closer look at the future of children’s education and have their ideas reflected in the plan.
The district’s goal was to engage a broad range of stakeholders, including parents, teachers, students, school district staff, aboriginal communities and community organizations.
There have been multiple opportunities for the public to share ideas on improving the district’s school system, including focus groups, an online questionnaire and four community meetings held Nov. 13 to 16 at the Okanagan Indian Band’s New Horizons Hall, Charles Bloom and Vernon secondary schools and the First Nations Friendship Centre in Vernon.
The district has hired Modus Planning, Design and Engagement consulting firm to analyze and make sense of the data.
“We’re very appreciative of the school principals, vice-principals and senior district staff so they could lead focus groups with their staff and PACs, who have been working with teachers and support staff,” said district superintendent Joe Rogers. “The feedback portion is open and then Modus has programmers who will go through all the data, code it and bring that back to our strategic advisory team, which is 29 members throughout the community.”
In early December, the strategic planning core team will write a first draft of a strategic plan outline based on the input that has been received from the community.
“One of the interesting things for me I’m looking forward to seeing is those key values that have come out and I know that relationships was by far the number-one we saw so far,” said Rogers. “The draft will go out to everyone again and the board will hopefully be in a position to work with Modus and the strategic advisory team and have a final plan for the February board meeting so that we know what we might want to do with the budget to address the first part of the strategic plan.
