Gilroy Unified School District has been seeking input from
parents on its three-year strategic plan
– and the response has been underwhelming.
Turnout at forums intended to solicit parental input has been
low, and in one case, nonexistent: No one attended a forum slated
for April 3.
Gilroy Unified School District has been seeking input from parents on its three-year strategic plan – and the response has been underwhelming.
Turnout at forums intended to solicit parental input has been low, and in one case, nonexistent: No one attended a forum slated for April 3.
There are lots of reasons for the lack of community participation in the strategic planning process. We all lead busy lives with commitments before and after working hours. It’s difficult to find the time to attend what promises to be a long and perhaps contentious meeting.
That difficulty is compounded when community members have no idea what in the heck the strategic plan is supposed to be.
The GUSD Web site says the strategic plan “outlines the vision, core values, bold student achievement goals, key strategies and theory of action for the reform work over the next three years.”
Huh? That sounds like anyone without a degree in education or an education-ese-to-English translator will be lost at the strategic plan meetings.
So we have a bold suggestion: Scrap the strategic plan work done so far and start over.
Given the inauspicious start the strategic planning process had with the eight highly inflammatory and suspect student profiles used by the strategic plan update committee, and the lack of interest in the process from parents and the community at large, it doesn’t seem that we’d be tossing much of value.
Moreover, we’re left wondering what role the real subject-matter experts – the teachers – are playing in forming this plan.
If the plan is being fashioned without Gilroy’s teachers – and with members of the out-of-town Stupski Foundation – then it’s going to be one thing only: worthless.
After it gets back to square one, the district needs to put the strategic plan in context. What, in English please, do they want the strategic plan to accomplish? Are GUSD officials looking for rubber-meets-the-road types of suggestions? Say, perhaps, things like “I want to be able to e-mail my child’s teacher and get a response in one school day” or “All middle and high school students’ homework should be posted on a Web site and teachers should be required to keep the information up-to-date” or “I can’t stand the traffic to drop my kid off at school.”
Or are they looking for more theory-based input? Things like, “Phonetic awareness needs to be emphasized in early elementary school” or “Project-based learning shouldn’t take precedence over drilling math basics” or “Admission to advanced and AP classes should be based on merit.”
We don’t know, and we doubt the parents and taxpayers of the district understand, what the school district is looking for, either.
Once they’ve established that context, GUSD needs to market the strategic plan process. How about ads with Superintendent Edwin Diaz’s face, under the headline “E-mail Edwin” and a few lines explaining the kind of input the district needs.
Then, when the committee has gathered community input, it can develop a draft strategic plan, with emphasis on the word “draft.” This is the point where elected officials usually hope for blanket community acceptance and are disappointed when they receive criticism.
But this is a key part of the process. Once a draft plan is written, the community will have a much better idea of what the district is trying to do and will be able to offer salient comments about what’s included and what’s been omitted from the plan.
And it will be incumbent upon GUSD officials to listen to the comments and overhaul the plan accordingly.
Give it context, market it, make it tangible, revise it: That’s how GUSD can come up with a strategic plan that reflects the will of Gilroyans and the best interests of our students.
