Strategic planning under way for D-21

In the Dec. 16 meeting, former zone 1 school board director Rebecca Thistlethwaite expressed her excitement for a district strategic plan. “We (the district) have not had a strategic plan for I think 15 years or so, so I’m really excited about this, and I also really look forward to good engagement from the community in the process.”

In a Feb. 15 Facebook post, NWCSD 21 announced it had begun the strategic planning process and introduced Jack McLaughlin from Public Consulting Group (PCG), which, according to its website, is a public sector management and operations improvement firm that partners with health, education, and human services agencies. McLaughlin will act as facilitator to assist in the strategic planning process. According to McLaughlin in a March 1 strategic planning meeting with the community, PCG has worked with five school districts in the Columbia Gorge area in the past, “We’re super excited to meet your community,” he said.

On March 1, the district facilitated a meeting with community members, where Bernal, McLaughlin and District Communications Director Stephanie Bowen spoke to the community about what strategic planning is, the process of developing a five-year plan, and how members of the community can get involved in the process.

“Think about the year 2027, five years from now,” said Bernal. “We want to think about the future of the students in our community, and what is it that we want for students in schools over the course of the next five years.”

In his presentation, McLaughlin broke down the phases of work, projecting a five-month planning process going through August 2022, with phases one and two consisting of launching and planning, phase three being community conversations and reviewing data, phase four as developing the strategic vision and goals, and phase five being the final strategic plan. In his break down of the planning process, McLaughlin noted that the timelines of several of the phases overlap with each other.

Currently, the district is in the first phases of launching and planning, as well as gathering community and stakeholder input.

“Think about the portrait of our graduates, think about our educators throughout our schools, our community, what is that gonna look like in 2027?” said McLaughlin. “And what we’ll do is we’ll align that thinking with all of the stakeholders in the community to figure out what that looks like and what kind of investments … that we need to be making.”

In the meeting, Bowen spoke on the different stakeholders the district is seeking input from, such as community members, district staff, families, students, community partners, as well as broke down all the different avenues in which those stakeholders can contribute that input. Those avenues include community forums like the one held on March 1, and an online survey that opened the week of March 7 and will be open for the month, as well as a PCG managed email address in which members of the community can email their input and feedback directly to PCG. According to Bowen, information shared by email is confidential and will only be seen by PCG staff.

The district is also gathering feedback through facilitating community focus groups. Having also opened the week of March 7, stakeholders who sign up to participate will be grouped into categories based on their role in the North Wasco County community, such as teachers, staff members, families (elementary, middle, high school), students, and community partners. Focus group meetings will be taking place virtually over Zoom, and anyone interested in participating can fill out a google form that is available on the district website, where they can also find more information. According to Bowen, the district plans on holding at least one focus group in Spanish.

“Anyone and everyone is invited to give input,” said Bowen.

“I’m really excited to engage in this work,” said Bernal. “I’m really excited to engage all of our stakeholders and get their feedback on really what they envision for our schools for the next five years … good or bad, we’ll take it all, because we can only get better with the most information we get from all of our stakeholders.”