Building A Better Pleasantdale (1 of 4)

Only you can control your future.
Dr. Seuss

At this week’s Board of Education meeting, I presented our five-year strategic plan. The goal of this plan is to put action steps that will help the district realize the mission of our district and provide an even better school experience for our students.

A Future Planning Committee of 50 parents, teachers, students, administrators, and community members collaborated to create our new mission, belief statements, Portrait of a Pleasantdale Graduate, and goal areas. These elements form the foundation of our work for the next five years.  Once this foundation was set, the staff created action steps to make the vision of the committee a reality. As the steward and voice of the district, it is then the Board’s job to provide feedback on the plan, approve, and support the work of the administration and staff.

Our new plan, which we are calling our Strategic Blueprint, outlines the specific steps the district will take to move our schools from great to greater. Our work falls into three broad areas:

  • Building Learning Capacity: Pleasantdale leaders and learners will cultivate advancement of global competency and cultural awareness through innovative learning experiences.
  • Building Learning Environments: Our schools will provide flexible learning environments that promote purposeful collaboration and a balanced educational approach to create inspired 21st century learners.
  • Building Human Capital: We will ensure Pleasantdale is recruiting, hiring, and retaining high-level professionals that engage in collaborative professional development and are committed to learning and implementing innovative strategies focused on improved student learning.

These three categories are broad enough to sustain us for the next five years while also being specific enough to give us the necessary direction to craft action steps and measures.

The best strategic plans possess a foundation to guide the work, but are nimble enough to allow the organization to proactively create action steps based on current conditions. This is why our staff will annually create new action steps to make the vision of the Future Planning Committee a reality.

In the first year of our Strategic Blueprint, the district will engage in studies and collect research to begin making the vision a reality.  In the coming weeks, we will put the finishing touches on the plan and expect to have a product to deliver to the community after Board approval in March.

Over the course of the next three weeks I will dig deeper into each of our goal areas as we work to acheive our goal of Building a Better Pleasantdale.

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2 comments on “Building A Better Pleasantdale (1 of 4)
  1. Vivian says:

    How might changes in Springfield, including a proposed flat tax, impact the roll out and implementation of the strategic plan?

    • David says:

      Hi Vivian,

      Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful question. Of course all plans are subject to having the resources to make them a reality. In Pleasantdale well over 90% of our funding comes from local property tax. A property tax freeze would have a huge impact on our ability to fund the most ambitious parts of our plan. However, as we look at our three goal areas (Building Learning Capacity, Building Learning Environments, and Building Human Capital) there is much we can accomplish for a very low cost. While we can’t control what happens in Springfield we can prepare for it and I think our Blueprint is an excellent planning tool for moving the district forward even in the face of dwindling resources.

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