The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) approved a strategy map for Alachua County Public Schools 4-1 at its regular meeting on Tuesday, but voted unanimously to bring back the accompanying implementation plans at a later date.
The strategy map approved by the school board is a broad overview of the district’s goals for 2024-2027, with the following vision:
“We will graduate students who have the knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics to be lifelong learners and independent thinkers. Our graduates will excel in their chosen careers and be productive and contributing members of the global community.”
The map is split into four themes: teacher recruitment and retention, system and organizational processes, student achievement and professional learning.
“Although this map contains four distinct themes, they work in concert with each other,” Jacquatte Rolle, ACPS’s chief of teaching and learning, told the board. “So, for example, as our teachers receive target professional learning, instruction in the classroom improves, which increases student learning and achievement. And as teachers see more success in their job performance, retention increases as well.”
Each theme includes a handful of critical initiatives to work toward an objective, and annual implementation plans are meant to guide those themes more specifically.
The year-one implementation plan document brought before the board on Tuesday is a “working document,” according to Rolle, which could change as working groups meet barriers and work toward their goals.
But board members took issue with the lack of specific and measurable goals in the implementation plans.
Board Member Sarah Rockwell, who is a leader in the student achievement strategic theme, said though she does not think the public needs to see every detail of the internal plans, the district should publish the activities planned under each critical initiative.
Board Member Kay Abbitt agreed with Rockwell, saying though she understood staff analyzed student performance, discipline, attendance, teacher performance, teacher retention and multiple other factors, there are not enough clear steps listed.
“I look at this and we’re relying on the data, but what are the activities we’re going to do that’s going to change the data?” Abbitt said.
Rolle said staff could share the activities with the board and make them available to the public at the first quarterly update.
Board Member Tina Certain said while she agreed with Abbitt and Rockwell, she also felt the plans were missing ways to measure their success and keep the district accountable.
“I’m looking here at the teacher recruitment and retention. It says ‘implement highly effective practices for recruitment.’ What are those practices that we’re saying are highly effective, and how do they differ from what we’re doing now, what we’re going to do different?” Certain said. “And the measures that are here… ‘increase quality applicants’—how are we going to define quality applicants, and what’s the measure of that?”
Board Member Leanetta McNealy said the other board members’ calls for more explicit listings of activities and evaluation methods indicated to her that the plans may require redesigning.
Though the strategy map and implementation plans document were together as one item on the agenda, the board chose to separate them into two votes, approving the strategy map in a 4-1 vote with Certain in dissent, and unanimously approving a motion to have staff bring the implementation plans back for a vote at a later date.