CAPTION: Hutchinson School district’s strategic plan has four main areas of focus, resources, early childhood learning, student achievement, and culture. CREDIT USD308
By Kate Irelan
Hutchinson School Superintendent Dr Dawn Johnson presented the progress the district has made on its strategic plan goals, including increasing staff salaries, increasing graduation rates, decreasing chronic absenteeism, adding childcare and daycare centers and introducing pre-k to kindergarten pilot programs at the USD 308 Board of Education meeting Monday evening.
Johnson explained that the strategic plan has four main areas of focus: resources, early childhood learning, student achievement, and culture. Johnson said that she quantified all the areas except culture because it requires different ways to measure progress.
She determined that they are 45% complete on reaching goals for school resources, and work on 33% of the goals in this area has not started yet. Some of the goals they’ve accomplished include reducing faculty by about 50, calling it right-size faculty, increasing teacher pay to $46,000 and classified staff pay to $15.25/hour making the district number one in staff pay.
For early childhood learning, Johnson indicated they have started work on all the goals and have completed 33% of those goals including starting construction on childcare and daycare centers, special education serving Head Start and pre-k, and introducing pre-k to kindergarten pilot programs.
Seventeen percent of the goals are complete in student achievement including raising the graduation rate from 86% to 92.1%, reducing chronic absenteeism from 30.6% to 21.54%, and increasing 3rd grade reading levels from 50% to 51.21%.
Board president Laura Corey reported some anecdotal progress for the strategic plan focus on culture. She said she attended the orchestra festival hosted by Hutchinson schools and there were about 400 to 500 middle school and high school students who attended and teachers and students were helping make the event a success. Corey said, “At events like this I think was a very clear example of how our staff work hard to create an engaging culture we can be proud of. It was nice we got to host it. People were coming to Hutchinson, enjoying the event, staying in hotels, and spending money.”
One action item in the meeting was to consider the final wording of the bond resolution. The board unanimously approved in a roll call vote. Gleysha Mendez-Rosario was absent. The Hutchinson Tribune reported on this bond on November 23.
Other items discussed were:
Board members are to complete their Superintendent evaluation by December 9.
The employee-led benefits committee made a change to the health insurance.
New graphic wraps for 2 school buses with a primarily black design.
The school accreditation model will be changing from every 5 years to annual.
The district will host representatives from Teacher of the Year on December 12.
Operations director Randy Norwood will have a retirement party on December 9.
The USD 308 board meets every second and fourth Monday of the month at 6:00 p.m. in the Administration Center, 1520 N. Plum. For more information and to view the agenda or minutes of the meetings, visit their website, https://www.usd308.com/page/boe.
