News updates are sent daily. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Mesa schools seek input on strategic plan
Digg|
Save|
License|
Print|
E-mail|
Mesa residents, parents and business leaders have an opportunity to help their local public school district create a plan for the future.
This year, the Mesa Unified School District is developing a strategic plan, one that will be a “blueprint for our work for the next several years,” said associate superintendent Mike Cowan.
A 50-member committee of business leaders, parents, students, higher education professionals, principals, staff members and teachers met last semester to start the groundwork for the plan’s creation. They will meet a few more times this semester as the process unfolds.
“During that time the committee will collect information from the community revising the mission statement, the vision statement and establishing long-rang broad overarching goals our system will be focused on that will all go into our strategic plan,” Cowan said.
To reach out to the community, the district has launched a Web site where anyone can share a response to one question: Think about the ideal school system. What would be important for our school system to do to meet the needs of students and all other school system customers and stakeholders?
The site, which opened this week, can be found at www2.mpsaz.org/yourvoice.
Though Mesa Unified has created plans in the past, this is the first time it has tried to collect input from a variety of community members on what the key values should be in the district, Cowan said.
With the online question, Cowan said, the committee hopes to learn what the community thinks about Mesa schools’ strengths and areas that need improvement, as well as where the district should be focused in the future.
In the last few years the district as launched the Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies, an International Baccalaureate World School at Westwood High School and a Health Science High School.
The district is also eyeing plans to be the first school in the state to have International Baccalaureate education for all ages, kindergarten through 12th grade.
Future ideas may be drawn from what’s learned from the community, with the strategic plan in place as a road map.
“It will help us evolve our programs or validate them as the case may be and give us a little road map for the next few years,” said board member David Lane.
Please add your comments, but follow these guidelines to keep this a safe, credible place for discussing the news: