School District Develops a New Strategic Plan

With a new superintendent at the helm in the fall, the will also have a new strategic plan in place for the upcoming academic year.

“Planning for the 21st Century,” or PT21, is the 2011-2014 strategic plan for the school district that will replace “The Plan for Excellence,” the strategic plan implemented in 2006 that in 2009 met its goal of achieving an “Excellent” rating for the school-district’s state report card. Former Superintendent Ed Holland initiated development of both the proposed and previous strategic plans.

Facilitator Jim Zwisler, a retired Akron educator serving as a private consultant for several school districts throughout Summit County, has led the steering committee since last fall in developing PT21. Teachers, parents, students and community residents of Cuyahoga Falls and Silver Lake comprised the 28-member, volunteer, steering committee, which included in the strategic plan input received during April from a community dialogue at . The committee received nearly 200 responses from the public through a web-based, community survey created by Patrick Kennedy, director of the school district’s technology department.

“As you can see, this was a very thoughtful project,” Zwisler told the Cuyahoga Falls Board of Education at a May 23 presentation at Cuyahoga Falls High School of the final language of the PT21 strategic plan, along with the web-based survey results.

PT21 includes revisions to the school-district’s belief, vision and mission statements and identifies four focus areas for action items to be implemented during the next three years:

• Teaching & Learning, Assessment and Professional Development.

• School Culture & Student Services.

• Family, Business and Community Involvement.

• Facilities/Environments, Organization and Resource Leveraging.

Parent Mary Rhodes-Nichols, a steering committee member, said implementing a strategic plan for the school district is a dynamic process.

“The educational environment and technology, certainly, and the community are fluid and ever-changing and, therefore, we have to evaluate and improve in an ongoing way as well… Jim kept telling us, this is the ‘what,’ and the ‘how’ comes later. So as you hear these, please realize that a lot of work has yet to be done,” Rhodes-Nichols said.

A steering sub-committee will remain involved in the implementation of the PT21 strategic plan, Zwisler said.

As currently worded, the new mission statement for the school district will be: The mission of The Cuyahoga Falls City School District is to assure each student is equipped with the skills necessary to meet the challenges of the future.