Blue Valley takes public’s input on ‘Vision 2020’ plan

The Blue Valley School District’s communitywide strategic planning session on Wednesday for its “Vision 2020” plan for 2015 to 2020 centered on what Superintendent Tom Trigg called “four essential questions.”

The questions:

▪ “What skills, abilities and ‘habits of mind’ do our students need when they leave Blue Valley schools?

▪ In an increasingly globalized context, what skills, abilities and ‘habits of mind’ do our students need by 2020 and beyond?

▪ What challenges are we facing today, or will soon, that may act as impediments to our successes, but also serve as opportunities when they are overcome?

▪ We’ve done well, but have we missed anything?”

About 150 people attended the four-hour session at the district’s Hilltop Campus in Overland Park. They included parents, students, teachers, business leaders, building administrators, staff members, elected officials and organizational leaders, district spokeswoman Kaci Brutto said.

Attendees were organized into groups of about half a dozen each throughout the session. They discussed each question in turn for prescribed time periods, brainstormed answers and narrowed them down first to the top five for each question and then to the top two. Then they passed their answers on to be considered for integration into the strategic plan.

The district’s board and administrative team will put the plan together and keep their constituents informed along the way, and then the board will vote on a final plan, probably in late spring or early summer, Trigg said.

“The hallmark of our process is community involvement,” Trigg said earlier this month. “The process is lengthy. We don’t just put a plan together and put it on a shelf. It’s a living document, and the board holds us accountable.”

This is the district’s third five-year strategic plan. Its first was for 2005 to 2010. Trigg opened Wednesday’s session with an overview of the district’s progress from 2005 to the present.

“We decided back in ’05 that we just couldn’t stop at the status quo,” he said.

He offered district statistics, including: Composite ACT scores have followed a mostly upward trend in the past 20 years and currently sit at 25.3, up from 22.6 in 1995. This compares to the statewide figure of 22, up from 21.2 in 1995, and the national figure of 21, up from 20.8 in 1995.

The district’s current SAT mean score is 1,864, up from 1,810 in 2010. This compares with 1,753 statewide, up from 1,752 in 2010, and 1,497 nationally, down from 1,509 in 2010.

Trigg gave the statistics in the context of this one: School districts in Kansas have had the fifth-largest percentage reduction in education funding in the nation since 2009.

Following Trigg’s introduction, education consultant David Livingston, former executive director of elementary education for the Cherry Creek School District in Denver and facilitator of Wednesday’s session, started guiding participants through the process.

The plan in progress is framed, as were the prior two plans, by goals addressing students’ academic performance and personal growth, which involves work ethic, integrity, problem-solving and creative thinking, and development as citizens.

Midway through the second strategic plan, for 2010 to 2015, the district added goals of becoming a world academic leader with exemplary teachers and implementing a digital strategy that included better connections between teachers and staff.

Trigg’s view of the skills students and the district will need in 2020: preparation for international competition, quality of teaching, and technology, he said.

Among comments participants made on Wednesday while addressing the four essential questions in their groups:

▪  “Are we trying to shove more stuff into a kid’s head (than the student can manage well)? Is a kid’s ability to absorb greater (now than in the past)?”

▪ “You don’t see kids just go outside and play and fantasize anymore.”

▪ “We have kids in this district who don’t have the Internet at home, who don’t eat if it’s not a school day. It’s a small percentage, but I don’t think we leave those kids behind.”

▪  “Know your strengths and weaknesses. Know what lights your fire.”

▪ “Kids are adept at using technology, but not in using it to create an academic argument that would convince even a skeptic.”

▪ “The ability to fail and bounce right back and do it again” is important.

▪ “We want our students to always be exploring and have an agile mind.”

▪ “Complacency — you are so good you think you can’t learn something from anybody else.”

▪ “Shouldn’t teachers be a priority? They dedicate so much time to us.”

After the session, school board vice president Mike Seitz said he’d found the process “invigorating because it allowed a lot of different opinions.”

Sabrina Cline, a junior at Blue Valley West High School, said she “loved the way they respected us.”

“I felt like an adult talking to adults,” she said.

Cline has a younger brother in the district, she said, “and it’s nice having input into his education.”

Mitch Laube, also a junior at West, summed up what he thought was the session’s proper focus.

“I think they really valued the students’ opinions,” he said, “because that’s what this is about — the students.”

This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 11:56 AM with the headline "Blue Valley takes public’s input on ‘Vision 2020’ plan."