Two consultants visited Haines schools last week to update the district’s Strategic Plan. The visiting team conducted interviews and held community meetings. The district hopes to have a new plan ready for action by the time doors open for school next year.
Haines Borough School District Superintendent Roy Getchell is working on a five-year strategic plan. It’s a document that serves as a road map to guide a school’s vision, values, priorities and goals. And it provides strategies for meeting those targets.
It’s been five years since the district’s plan has undergone a big overhaul. Getchell says the current plan, which was created during his first year as superintendent, did a good job guiding the school through challenging times.
“And that plan actually really supported us through the pandemic,” Getchell said. “Because we had difficult decisions to make. Our priorities were living within that plan. But I think this is really the next step in taking our district to a place of excellence, versus surviving with excellence through a pandemic.”
Getchell says he intends for the plan to be a living document, meaning that it can be adapted by the community as needs change and challenges arise. He says he learned a lot from his experience creating a plan for the district in 2019.
“And it was a great experience…we had a plethora of community members meet in the library for two or three days,” Getchell said. “And we worked heavily on our mission and vision, which we’re still really proud of, and we’re going to hang onto that….So really all of our efforts at that time, and we felt that was the community’s desire as well was to stay open, uninterrupted, keep education going, as normal as possible for the students. So we’ve come out of that, and we need to get away from that doldrum, and really launch into what I think is the excellence that this community deserves, that I think a strategic plan will help us achieve.”
Getchell reached out to Colorado-based consulting company Education Partners for help in developing the new plan. Dr. Erica Burns is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. She visited Haines last week, along with Executive Vice President Mike Poore. The representatives held meetings and interviews. They posed questions to parents, students, staff and the school board to gather information about the core values of the Haines School District.
Getchell says that he contacted the firm largely based on his rapport with one of the representatives – Mike Poore. Poore was his professor over 20 years ago, when he was taking leadership classes. Getchel says he’s happy to have third-party support in developing a strategic plan.
“I’m really excited to have support…one thing I think is really important to remember is that transparency is a public value everywhere but here it’s not just a value, it’s expected,” Getchell said. “So that’s one reason it’s been really great to get another set of eyes on this. They came and agreed to do this at an absolutely huge discount. We’re paying expenses and $2,500 and we’re super appreciative. I’m happy the board supported us in this. And that ED partners agreed to do it. It really is going to provide something that the community owns, that I’m going to be responsible for. That the board is going to hold me accountable to. But that also that the board is going to be responsible for as well. We are all going to be evaluating our performance as a school district.
Once a set of goals is established, the plan will provide metrics to measure how close the school comes to hitting those targets. For example, under “organizational excellence” the district’s current plan sets a goal rate of 90% for staff retention each year. Last school year the district had 11 new hires between teachers and administrators, and only three are renewing their contracts for the next year.
Poore, with the consulting company, says that staff retention came up many times in his interviews, as well as how to attract new staff. But he says the feedback his company received was largely positive. He says he learned that overall there was a large sense of pride about the school district and that students appreciated that they are treated as individuals.
Poore says he learned that people wanted to track what students are doing after they graduate. He says he was asked to create a metric for showing how prepared students felt going to college, or becoming a business owner or launching straight into a career. Poore says that gathering first-hand interviews in Haines was the first step in helping the district develop a new strategic plan.
“Initially the first phase of coming back after this is sharing our findings…every individual comment, everything that gets written here gets put into the report,” Poore said. “So, there is nothing that gets hidden. But what we do is that we lump that data together. So there are certain things that emerge as priorities. If it’s a priority we want the board to confirm it. And then we start to develop strategic goals for it.”
Getchell says that the school is working with the firm to collect and synthesize data over the next few weeks. But it will be months before the plan is finalized.
“It’s my intention and my hope that we start the next school year ready to go and running full speed ahead,” Getchell said.
Getchell says that findings will be presented to the school board on April 30th in a workshop. The new plan will need to be adopted by the board and will then be posted on the school district website.
