School board to vote on strategic plan

Jessica Garrison

NEWPORT-MESA -- Making art, music and drama an integral part of the

classroom. Eliminating racism across the district. Teaching all students

to read and use computers.

These and other lofty educational goals were taken up by board members

last year as part of the district’s first-ever Strategic Plan.

Tonight, board members will vote on whether to approve programs large and

small that will take those long-term, abstract goals and put them into

action.

If, as expected, board members vote to approve the plan’s mammoth sheaf

of suggested programs, district officials will begin to put each and

every one of its ambitious calls to action into place.

Board members hammered most of these concrete steps into place at a

two-day marathon meeting with district officials last week.

They decided that some of the goals, such as reading and basic skills,

are urgent. Others, such as emphasizing art and combining alternative

education with adult education, could be planned out this year, they

decided, but don’t necessarily need to be put into place until the next.

Tonight’s vote marks the culmination of a yearlong process by the board

and Supt. Robert Barbot to help students do better in school and to make

school employees, from the superintendent to the teacher to the gardener,

accountable to parents and students.

Last year, Barbot held a series of community meetings to talk to parents,

students, teachers and community members about what they wanted from

their schools.

From those meetings, board members in June developed the Strategic Plan,

a series of long-term, but also relatively vague, goals for student

achievement.

That’s where the document to be voted on by board members tonight comes

in. It shows board members, and the public, exactly what district

officials intend to do to achieve their goals.

“Tonight is really putting the plan that the community developed into

action,” Barbot said. “We took the vision and the idea, and then we

developed very specific [plans] so we are all accountable.”

Take, for example, the goal that district officials will “identify

standards by which students will be assessed.”

Though noble, some might wonder exactly what it means, or how district

officials plan to go about achieving it.

The plan of action for that goal tries to eliminate that ambiguity. It

calls for all teachers and parents in the district to receive a copy of

the district’s standards. District officials also will attend

professional development seminars on standards, and, in turn, will teach

parents and teachers about them.

“This is what we’re supposed to be doing,” board member Jim Ferryman said

about the plan.

Also on the board’s agenda:

* Whether to approve an agreement with local hotels to teach English to

hotel workers.

* What direction to give Supt. Barbot’s Facilities Advisory Committee,

which has been working since August to figure out what to do about the

district’s crumbling classrooms. Two weeks ago, the committee gave board

members its report and asked for further direction.

* A public hearing on whether district students have enough textbooks.