Mineola Board of Ed to Develop New District Goals

Following a pair of retreats prior to the opening of school, the has still not settled on an update to its goals for the school district as a whole.

Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler had recently sent a draft of board goals to board members prior to the September 15 board meeting, but the board felt that since it did not have all of its members present, it would be inappropriate to hold a discussion. Trustee John McGrath was absent from the September 15 meeting.

“I understand that but just to be on the same page with the board, I cannot develop my goals without the board developing their goals,” Dr. Nagler said, noting that he could “guesstimate” what most of the goals would be and not be that far off target.

“There’s no guarantee that at the next meeting we’ll have a full board,” board president Christine Napolitano said. “How much longer can we wait?” She later added that “I don’t want to sit and wait. we have to get back to talking about education,” and indicated that the board may have to revisit policy about trustee attendance.

In response the superintendent suggesting commenting by e-mail and returning for an in-person discussion at a later date.

The “mission” and core values of the district were first developed in 2002 and the strategic objectives which were set were to have been achieved by 2007. The board have not revisited them since.

After the strategic committee met and developed the objectives, they were handed off to another team call the Strategic Objective Assessment Team, which developed how the goals were to be measured – such as fifth grade exhibition, surveys – and then to publicize them for the sake of accountability.

“That work kind of stopped,” Dr. Nagler said. “In essence we’re a new school system, we’re configured differently and its a good time to take a pulse of our community to say ‘are these things still important to us, is the mission still valid to us or do we want to change it? Are these objectives really what we want today in 2011, have they changed and if they have what are the new ones and how do we measure them?’”

As part of the plan to update the goals, the district would revisit both its mission and core values by working with district council, teachers, administrators and residents without children in a situation very similar to the “Triple-C” committee.

“The real tricky part is how do you assess them?” Dr. Nagler said of the new goals and standards.