“This strategic plan updates our district improvement plan and incorporates all of the things we are doing with our Race to the Top grant,’’ said Mary Malone, assistant superintendent for curriculum, referring to a federal grant the district is using to support local education reform initiatives.
She noted that a group of parents, administrators, School Committee members, and teachers worked for about 18 months on the plan.
The culmination is a 38-page document that calls for the district and each of its schools to formulate “clear, credible, and academically sound improvement plans’’ that ensure accountability and effectiveness, while encouraging parents to work collaboratively with educators to improve student performance.
The strategic plan seeks to reinstate foreign language classes for seventh- and eighth-grade students and build partnerships with local businesses to enhance classroom lessons.
Other goals include the development of new career-focused academies at the high school; the creation of an innovation school, an option the district is now considering for Tilton Elementary; and expanding the city’s limited number of full-day kindergarten classes, which are now available only at the Greenleaf, Walnut Square, and Golden Hill elementary schools with tuition of nearly $5,000 per year, per student.
“The focus is, obviously, to improve teaching and learning in our schools,’’ said Malone.
The strategic plan, unveiled at the Dec. 15 School Committee meeting, is being considered as the district works to update its curriculum to ensure classroom instruction aligns with the new frameworks, or core standards, set by state education officials. All districts must incorporate the new standards by the 2013-2014 academic year, Malone said.
School Committee members Paul A. Magliocchetti and Raymond Sierpina, who helped to develop the strategic plan, said the document provides a uniform set of goals for all schools in the district. Each principal will be charged with developing a school improvement plan that outlines what steps, or action items, his or her school will undertake to achieve each goal.
