The School Board of Alachua County received a presentation on strategic planning at a workshop on Wednesday. 

Nicole Reeves, senior director at Cognia, a nonprofit accreditation organization, explained that the plan should help move Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) beyond plans driven by accountability and compliance, instead of thinking strategically. The plan is also intended to engage multiple stakeholders in the planning process, drive continuous evaluation and help focus and optimize improvement efforts 

The first phase, envisioning, involved a committee with more than 50 members, according to Reeves. The committee looked at data from focus group interviews, stakeholder perception data from surveys, attendance data, discipline data, student performance data, professional learning data and other data to develop a long-range plan and smaller prioritized initiatives to be approached annually. 

The visioning brought out four strategic themes. Teacher recruitment and retention, system and organizational processes and student achievement will be high-level objectives for the next three years, and professional learning will be another ongoing goal. 

Once strategic themes were identified, strategic theme leaders and co-leaders either volunteered or were nominated and accepted, with the following leadership set out: 

• Teacher recruitment and retention: Alisha Williams and Heather Harbour 

• System and organizational processes: Kim Neal and Nannette Dell 

• Student achievement: Dakeyan Graham, Jim Kuhn, Sarah Rockwell 

• Professional learning: Jennifer Petit-Frere 

These leaders are working with their 20-30-person committees to develop implementation plans for their themes, determining measurable goals and what data can be used to track progress. 

“Remember, this is not the plan of any individual group or any individual,” Reeves told the board. “This is a team effort so that each strategic theme committee is responsible… to have an audience for inclusive discussions of all voices and commit to making sure the progress is forward-moving, and then to make sure that we do develop some kind of consensus.” 

Reeves said though there should be some stable membership in the committees, they should also always be open to new community stakeholders who want to join in the discussion. 

Reeves told the board the implementation plans should be ready by Aug. 16, though some changes may need to be made after activities begin. She said the board would receive quarterly updates on what has changed.