By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Brandon Twp. — The Brandon School District and superintendent Carly Stone are finalizing the new district strategic plan. The last strategic plan was created in 2015, and was designed to last until 2025.
“One of the items that was really important to the board and myself was to create our vision for the school district now and moving forward,” said Stone.
The process began in February when Stone was able to partner with Clarence Garner, retired superintendent of Grand Blanc. He acted as the facilitator and mentor through the strategic plan, working with the district and the strategic advisory committee.
“Essentially what we have done is created ourselves a road map to ensure that we’re focused,” she said. “Our jobs can be very complicated in education, and there’s always a shiny new toy or a pendulum that swings from one end back to the other again. And by having a strategic plan that is thoughtfully put together, we’re able to maintain and keep the main thing the main thing and ensure that we’re making progress towards our goal areas.”
The planning process began with a survey to the community to figure out what the district is doing well, where they need to grow, what the district families need or want from the school district, and who are the students going to be in the upcoming years.
“One of the things Clarence did for us, which was absolutely phenomenal, was gather a ton of data,” she said.
The survey went out to the community and received almost 300 responses, most of which were from parents. Garner also visited each building and met with students to survey them for similar data from the students relative to each building.
“For the most part, people are feeling very solid about the Brandon School District,” she said.
The community survey found that the greatest issues respondents thought that students were facing today are social media use, mental health, and peer pressure and bullying.
“None of this is surprising given where we are in the world and where we’ve come out of with the pandemic,” said Stone. “This was really, really important work for us.”
The current plan is for 2024-2027, but can be extended as the education landscape and the district grow and change. There are currently three focus areas for the district, each with goals and strategies to achieve those goals.
The first focus area is climate and culture. The first goal states the district will contribute to a climate and culture that values all individuals and considers the well-being of the whole child. The strategies to achieve this goal include implementing routines and opportunities to building strength and strengthening relationships across buildings, having age-appropriate programming regarding PBIS and HAWK trait work, and focusing on the physical and emotional safety and well-being for all students.
The second goal for climate and culture says the district will foster connections within and across our schools and the community to increase authentic learning opportunities and reciprocal partnerships. Strategies to achieve this include building relationships with district partners to design building-specific programming.
“It’s not just about having a partner,” said Stone. “It’s about building and doing something with that information and truly building authentic programming.”
The next area of focus is facilities and infrastructure. The first goal in that area is modernizing the existing learning environments to enable students to reach their unique potential. The strategies include generating classroom settings and environments and engage students and increase their outcomes, create an environment where all of the common areas and grounds foster pride, and to refurbish the existing athletic fields and facilities to attract more student participation.
“We know that the more students participating in items outside of school, connected to school, are more likely to be successful while they are at school,” said Stone.
The second goal is to increase student wellness by enhancing the food offerings and nutritional services, and strategies include creating more nutritious and appealing menus, as well as creating unique and inviting dining environments for the students.
The third area of focus is teaching and learning. The first goal area says Brandon will remain and maintain a pre-K-12 curriculum that is rigorous, relevant and aligned to state expectations and provides limitless opportunities for students.
“We already have state-standard curriculum, we already work really hard to be engaging and relevant,” she said. “But we want to make sure there’s limitless opportunities for our students.”
The first strategy is to ensure that the district has essential standards and broader curriculum developed, maintained, and aligned across the district, and the second strategy is to create and maintain systems to accurately reflect student learning that informs teacher planning of engaging and relevant learning opportunities.
The second goal is for all Brandon students to have opportunities to develop as people of character and to grow and learn all they need for future success, personally and professionally.
“That will happen by ensuring our students have voice and choice in a variety of course offerings we have here at the school district,” said Stone.
Work on these three focus areas is well underway, including updated school menus, facility upgrades through the last bond, restorative practices, more opportunities for celebration and more. Many of these will begin in fall 2024, and all of the strategies have timelines for work, who is accountable for those strategies, what evidence is being gathered, and the measurement tool to see if the strategy is making a difference.
“We’re going to spending time in these areas for a minimum of three years. Our goal is to keep it simple, our goal is to keep it focused, and our goal is to keep it attainable,” she said. “We already started with our food choices and being thoughtful to gathering input with students and parents, increase overall food participation, have a taste of Brandon event during lunches, implementing more communication about nutrition through the district menu.”
The strategic plan is 13 pages long with data charts and charts on strategies, as well as photos of students. It will launch on the website for the start of the school year. It is a working document, and the strategic planning committee will meet throughout the year to review, tweak, and expand the strategic plan.
“The goal is to articulate very clearly and very simply who we are, what we’re about, what we’re working on, and how we know we’re going to be working on those things and what progress we’re going to be making,” she said. “I’m so geeked to what this plan is going to bring our district, as we continue to move forward and most importantly our students as well as their families.”