Dear MPS partners and friends, The Shift campaign continues to bring urgency and attention to strategies that will accelerate student achievement and provide greater focus on supporting students and schools. I want to update you on two priorities: the creation of a new school resource allocation process and our course for developing the 2020 strategic plan. Both of these efforts are designed to include stakeholder input in the planning processes and support our efforts to raise student achievement. Beginning immediately after winter break, MPS will implement several high impact strategies in targeted schools, focused on narrowing gaps in achievement. Among these strategies is investment in co-teaching at the earlier grades at targeted sites across MPS, increased support for principals to drive instructional acceleration and continued implementation of Focused Instruction and teacher evaluation. Some of the strategies will provide increased personnel and resources to some of our most struggling schools. I will share more specifics with you soon about these strategies and the school sites they will benefit. Equitable School Funding We are in the process of designing a student-centered resource allocation process that is equitable, transparent, predictable and flexible. Our new school funding process will be modeled after the Fair Pupil Funding (FPF) system, which will ensure that all schools receive equitable resources that reflect the learning needs of students. Similar school allocation processes have proven to be effective in other urban school districts, such as those in Cincinnati, Boston, San Francisco and New York. MPS is partnering with the District Management Council (DMC), a Boston-based organization, to help us evaluate our current budgeting processes and design the new one. Working groups comprised of stakeholder representatives will be established to dig deeper into how the system should be designed. A steering committee made up of board members, central office staff members and principals will consider all recommendations from working groups and ultimately recommend the design for the new budgeting process. I wish to thank Chief Operating Officer Robert Doty and LeAnn Dow, who will be managing the design process, for leading this work. I am excited about the much-needed shift in our funding practices and will provide regular updates on the progress of this strategy. 2020 Strategic Plan We are also working on the development of a new strategic plan that will articulate our priorities and strategies from 2014 to 2020. The plan will be presented to the Board of Education for a vote in the summer of 2014. Some elements of our current 2007-2014 plan will not be changing. Our vision of “Every Child College and Career Ready” will continue to guide our work. Many of our current priorities, such as Focused Instruction and teacher evaluation, will continue. Our purpose in creating a new plan is to update and refine our strategies and action steps to accelerate student achievement, using the themes of the Shift campaign as a starting point. Although as a system we have made incremental gains, the current gaps in educational outcomes between student groups continue to be unacceptable. Creating a clear and concise plan for our efforts and priorities over the next five years is a critical next step. As part of the process to collect feedback that will inform the development of this plan, we are conducting a listening campaign with staff, families, students and community members. The goal of this effort is to hear directly from our stakeholders about what’s working, what’s not working and what we can do differently. The Board of Education will be holding a listening session on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m. to hear from constituents. For more information, visit the MPS website or email [email protected]. Our stakeholders’ investment in our work goes a long way in ensuring that we deliver on our promise of providing high quality education to all students. Thank you for all that you do to contribute to our progress. Sincerely, Bernadeia H. Johnson, Ed.D. Superintendent of Schools us2.campaign-archive1/home/?u=fb2f5014fb248a2d0bf1d4209&id=c143c99e1b
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:42:46 +0000
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