Photo courtesy of Shelby County Schools.
The Shelby County Schools strategic plan was released the end of September.
Shelby County Schools recently launched a new strategic plan to guide the district’s efforts to carry out its vision for the next several years.
“Empowering and Inspiring Excellence … The Path Forward” is the result of a couple years of research, planning and gathering input from various community partners. The plan was formally approved by the Shelby County Board of Education on Sept. 28.
This is a culmination of things the district had already been instituting, said Superintendent Lewis Brooks. He added that the strategic plan was drafted after gathering data and input from community members who share the same hopes for the school district that he does.
“We’ve had meetings with parents, students and teachers through our V.O.I.C.E [Vision, Openness, Insight, Communication and Engagement] meetings,” Brooks said. “We’ve had district leadership team meetings, cabinet meetings, all of our stakeholders investing in putting together what we feel like will help propel our kids to the next level in their educational journey.”
The plan itself derives its name from its new mission statement: To empower and inspire our students to achieve academic excellence and make a positive contribution to the world.
“The two words in this document that we feel like will be used a great deal moving forward are ‘empowering’ and ‘inspiring,’” Brooks said. “We feel like those two words will really help us with the things we’re planning to do with our district.”
The Strategic Plan commitments will focus on the following areas: innovation, leadership development, recruitment and retention, community partnerships and organizational commitment. Included within those five areas are communication, continuous improvement, professional learning and fiscal responsibility, which will be applied in all areas.
Brooks said the vision of the district has always been to be a model of excellence in education, and he believes that the new strategic plan will move the district forward.
He said there are a number of examples of things going on in Shelby County Schools that are innovative, including using virtual reality goggles in the middle schools and several career tech programs that have been launched this year and in previous years.
“We are constantly, through our team, discussing ways to improve the educational opportunities for our students,” Brooks said. “We really feel good about this document and feel good about the input we’ve received to help us launch this.”
For more information on the strategic plan, visit shelbyed.k12.al.us/page/vision.
