ROCKLAND CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT — The Rockland Central School District has built a good foundation of the reasons for the district, using feedback gathered last month, a district spokesperson said.

On Monday, May 19, about two dozen people gathered in the Livingston Manor auditorium to help build upon that foundation by continuing work on the strategic plan.

The plan will give the district a road map to achieve its long-term goals of providing a robust and quality education for all students.

The strategic-plan process started last month with the Shaping Our Future ThoughtExchange, where faculty, staff, students, parents, guardians and community members were able to share feedback focused on the educational and programmatic strengths and weaknesses of the current districts. The group concentrated on providing educational excellence and clearly defined educational outcomes for students. 

Working with advisers to create a Blueprint Strategic Plan, district leadership used that feedback to define the priorities for the new district and crafted a draft mission statement (the core purpose of the district), a vision statement (what the district wants to become), and core beliefs (the values of the district).

Monday’s meeting was designed to gather feedback from different stakeholder groups on that work and to help form objectives for the strategic plan. 

“We are building on the positives,” meeting facilitator Jason Andrews (of Leadership Solution Advisers) said. 

He presented the mission, vision and core beliefs, then district administrators presented what their departments are doing well, what they are working on and what they would like to accomplish. Those in attendance were asked to join ThoughtExchanges to offer their thoughts on the presentations and rate others’ entries.

Then the attendees got to work and broke into four groups, each to focus on one of the priority areas identified before the meeting: student success; high quality staffing and leadership; facilities and operations; and communication, engagement and school climate. Members of each group reviewed the initial ThoughExchange feedback, discussed their views and provided ideas for objectives for each priority area, or pillar, of the strategic plan. Those objectives were then shared with each group individually to gain further feedback, with final results presented to the entire gathering.

It is important to have a solid strategic plan in place, Andrews said. To help move everyone in the same direction, “we need a compelling answer for where we are going to go.”

The district leadership team will meet in June with the consultants to review the results of the Monday meeting to fill in the action plan and discuss acountability, thus completing the strategic plan.