After months of discussing and revising, the Sampson County School Board of Education has put its strategic plan on the consent agenda, where it will be formally voted on at its regular meeting Tuesday night. The board’s normal Monday night meeting was moved this month due to the Memorial Day holiday. It will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 26, at Midway Middle School.
A consent agenda is what the board often uses for items that need approval but no further discussion and are voted on in a bloc. It is a common practice at the board’s work sessions for members to discuss educational policy and other items, giving them more time to review processes, and then place them on a consent agenda for final approval at the regular board meeting, which is more limited in time.
The strategic plan has been a topic of great discussion over the past few months. During that time, board members have been working with the K-12 Coalition, along with one of its correspondents, Aurora Lora, to draft some new ideas to revamp the school system’s image and push more of what the school hopes to achieve with students and staff to the forefront. Additionally, the plan details initiatives for how the system plans to address areas of concern, such as community engagement and teacher and staff retainment by 2031.
The K-12 Coalition is an organization that works alongside teachers and school districts to improve learning outcomes and the impact each school makes. Since the fall of last year, Lora has been getting feedback from the board on what the system’s core values and mission should be, giving that to focus groups and getting their thoughts and then relaying that information back to the board for further revisions.
At the Tuesday morning work session this week, the board looked over a final draft of the plan, which includes a mission statement and core values, before voting unanimously to place it on the consent agenda. At its next meeting on May 26, the board will vote on the final plan.
Some drafted values the board landed on were innovation, community, growth and wellness, along with a few others. These core values were then used by the board to help construct the final draft of the system mission statement.
“Sampson County Schools prepares every student and staff member to thrive through safe learning environments, strong connections and opportunities to lead and serve their communities,” read the most recent draft of the system’s mission statement.
Back in February, Sampson County Schools Superintendent Dr. Jamie King explained that the purpose of a mission statement is to lay the foundation for decisions made by system officials
“The mission statement will be used to build the foundation of our schools,” said King in February. “I want to make sure that our foundation is solid. To me, when things come back to my office, we look at these things and see ‘OK, where does it check these boxes?’ and if it doesn’t check any, then why are we doing it? This really helps guide, for the most part, the majority of our decisions.”
In addition to the mission statement, the drafted plan also details some of the school district’s priorities that leaders wish to focus on and goals that they hope to achieve by 2031 as a result of strategies in the plan. Previously, the Coalition conducted a survey to figure out what system employees, students and their parents thought the schools needed to prioritize for the future. At the board’s December meeting, the results were revealed. In total, 2,487 people were asked to write a list of what their school should prioritize. Results showed that 1,250 people said school safety, 1,217 said mental health and wellness, and 949 responded with high school readiness and post-graduation success as the top three choices.
Prior to the board’s February meeting, the Coalition issued the survey again and received a total of 2,776 responses from the three groups. For this survey, the top answers in order from highest to least were mental health, school safety, high school readiness, post-graduation success, accelerated learning, STEM classes and fine arts classes.
With the top answers to the survey being mental health and school safety, concern was expressed by the board.
“I probed into why they were so high on the list during the focus groups,” said Lora at the December meeting. “The students said that it wasn’t anything particular about the district or their school. They said it was more about the media and that they’re seeing more stories about shootings. There was just a general worry about, ‘What if this happened at my school?’ Students were just asking if they could have more drills and things like that to make them feel more prepared and bring down the anxiety level.”
Now, taking the survey results into consideration, the strategic plan focuses on boosting student achievements and outcomes, healthy, safe and supportive learning environments, staff recruitment, retention, and development and community engagement.
“Our goals are to increase four-year graduation rates from 87 percent to at least 92 percent by 2031,” said Lora. “We also hope to increase the graduation rate of exceptional children (students with physical, cognitive, emotional, or sensory disabilities, as well as those who are academically or intellectually gifted), to at least 68 percent as measured by state assessments, and four-year cohort rates by 2031. Also by 2031, Sampson County Schools will ensure that at least 70 percent of students will be reading on grade level by the end of the third grade.”
In addition, the plan also discusses ways that the school system will attempt to reach its goals. For example, the plan states that to help increase staff recruitment rates by 2031, the school system will hire at least four staff members each year from their “Grow-Our-Own” initiative. This initiative involves teachers and other staff in the school helping guide young students who wish to enter into the education field into potentially coming back to work in the school system after they graduate from college. The strategic plan also states that this pipeline is poised to be self-sustaining, with at least five or more hires a year without being depleted by 2031.
As for making safer learning environments, the plan calls for all schools across the system to implement a district-wide safety protocol with both students and staff throughout the schools ,from fourth through twelfth grade, trained annually in emergency procedures by 2031.
“Additionally, by 2031, all staff in the system will be trained in youth mental health first aid to better support students’ well-being,” said Lora.
Final thoughts and comments from the board regarding the strategic plan will be made prior to a vote at its regular meeting scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Midway Middle.