Updating District Mission/Vision

If I were superintendent, I would call upon the advisory team/cabinet and share my plan for developing or updating the district mission and vision. Before implementing any parts of the process, I would want the cabinet, the administrative team, and the board to support the process. Change takes time and before change, listening must occur (Community). To this end I would expect this process to take two years...the first year to gather stakeholders together and the second to forge the vision and share it with the community. As a starting place, July and August would be when I would listen to the cabinet in weekly meetings and administrative team during a leadership retreat or similar event. I would be asking: 1. To what degree do we believe this work will enhance the educational experiences in our district? 2. What are we most proud of in this district? 3. Assuming that there are no barriers (financial, etc.), what are our next steps toward becoming the district of choice in our region? 4. If we could make shift in thinking to better our district, what would it be? To start, I would ask people to reflect upon these questions and write personal responses to them. Then, I would employ the World Cafe model for people to share their ideas and have discussions about them. These responses would be compiled and reviewed by the cabinet. This would give me a picture of the beliefs held by our administration. Question 1 gets at the value our administration places on vision and mission in general and may underscore the need for me to be very transparent-communicating openly about seeing this through in order to make it meaningful (especially in the event that there was distrust or frustration with this type of work in the past). Question 2 reveals what our administration believes to be most important to our district. It also allows us to build or capitalize on our strengths. Question 3 drives at what the team believes to be our next work toward a positive outcome. Question 4 reveals what thought processes could be challenged in order to improve.

I would repeat this process with the board of education in a retreat. This would give me insight into the board's perspective and would allow me to see where alignment or dissonance occurs between the cabinet, administrative team, and the board.

Following these conversations, I think it appropriate to share the results with the board and administrative team, to build upon consensus and to build understanding if there is disagreement.

The next step would be taking this to the schools. I believe that community buy-in occurs when the district is visible in the buildings. At each school, I would ask the same 4 questions of the staff during a staff meeting using the world cafe process. After school, I would invite the parents, students (as appropriate), community members, business-owners to a meeting. This would be promoted through social media, newsletters, web sites, mailings, and personal invitations. At this meeting, I would ask a similar set of questions: 1. To what degree do we believe this work will make our district better? 2. What are we most proud of in this school? 3. What are we most proud of in this district? 4. Assuming that there are no barriers (financial, etc.), what is something we could achieve together that would make our community even more proud of our schools? Our schools are the center of our community and our neighbors need to feel welcomed and invited to be part of shaping the direction of our schools.

After these discussions have taken place, the cabinet and board will study the responses. We will build upon consensus and learn where there might be disagreement. Where possible, themes will be grouped together and we will form a small set of goals (4-6) with several specific goals underneath each using the SMART goal format.