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What we’ve done so far
School Board Charge: On November 27, 2006, the school board passed Resolution No. 661 authorizing the superintendent to conduct a strategic planning process to chart a course for the school district for the next five years and beyond. The intent of the resolution is for Vancouver Public Schools to build upon its earlier successes and to develop a new strategic plan with the explicit intent of creating the finest public school system possible. A Futures Team composed of district and community leaders is managing the strategic planning process activities and timeline.
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| Symposium: More than 120 people attended a Future Search Symposium on March 15-17 last spring. During the three-day conference, participants heard speakers Ian Jukes and Dr. Robert Sylwester share their visions of the future of education, and worked in groups of eight discussing ideas to improve the school system. Those ideas were incorporated into a narrative summary of the conference and later were used in data compilation activities.
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| Leadership Mini-Symposium: A half-day version of the Future Search Symposium was held for district and school administrators using Appreciative Inquiry methodology.
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| Survey: An online survey was conducted on the Vancouver Public Schools website from March 19 to April 22. More than 1,100 people answered 19 selected-response and open-ended questions that included rating the performance of the district in several areas and ranking priorities for the future. Additionally, surveys were placed in school offices throughout the district, and translated versions were available in Spanish and Russian languages.
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| Listserv: In March and April, e-mail messages were sent to people in four listserv groups, including parents, community and business partners, members of the Vancouver School District Management Task Force, and members of the Vancouver School District Foundation Board of Directors. More than 100 participants responded to six questions about the future of the school district and ways to improve it.
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| Focus Groups: Seven focus group sessions were conducted in April and May to gather additional input on the future direction of Vancouver Public Schools. The focus groups included current students, recent graduates, district employees, parents (including families with English Language Learners and Special Education students), community and business leaders, and representatives of early childhood and higher education. Ideas and suggestions from these sessions were documented and scoured for common themes across the topics.
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| CrossWalk: In a two-day activity, the district’s Futures Team reviewed summaries of all the community input activities and grouped the emerging themes into “buckets” to see the strongest priorities of stakeholders. The Futures Team then went back to the raw data to look for any outlying comments and suggestions that may not have appeared often enough to be considered a main theme, but which were nonetheless valuable ideas.
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