District 30 putting final touches on strategic plan

Valley Stream Union Free School District 30 officials presented the final draft of the district’s new five-year strategic plan on May 11, outlining the document which will become the district’s vision for the future, guiding them through the next five years.

“This is a living document,” said Superintendent Nicholas Stirling. “This will help guide us through the next five years to make sure that we educate all students to their fullest potential. It allows us to identify what our goals are, how we are going to achieve them, and how we are going to measure that achievement.”

The existing strategic plan expires this year. The new plan, according to Stirling and the team that worked to create it, is focused on three areas, which Stirling dubbed the “three C’s”— curriculum, communication and capital.

“Those three C’s, and the improvement of each of them, are our goals for the next few years,” Stirling said. “We are always aiming for excellence in our schools and driven by a desire for equality, and we think through those C’s, we can achieve both.”

Three separate teams, which included residents, staff and administrators, focused on one “C” each before coming together to form a cohesive plan. School officials also sought input from community members via an online survey on the district’s website that asks residents their opinions on the plan’s most recent draft, which is also available online. The survey is still open, and responses will be accepted until June 1.

Roxanne Garcia France, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, led the curriculum team. She said the plan focused on combining the typical core subjects — math, science, history and English — with life skills.

“We are not just going to settle for one assessment to decide what our students have learned,” she said. “Social and emotional learning are an important part of our curriculum, a part that students need to combine with academics in order to find success outside of the classroom.”

Josh McPherson, assistant principal at Shaw Avenue Elementary School, captained the communication team. He said that through early online surveys, his team learned that parents wanted more insight into how their children spend their school days.

“Our parents want to understand what’s happening in the classroom,” he said. “They want to know what their children are supposed to be doing, and how they can help them do that. We found a lot of success educating them with programs like ‘Parent University,’ where we have them come in and we walk them through a new program or resource. We plan on having more of those workshops, and gathering their input more often from surveys and things like that, to find out what they want to learn about next.”

Lisa Rutskoe, the district’s assistant superintendent of business, said that keeping facilities well maintained with small, frequent repairs and upgrades and avoiding large-scale renovation projects is a cornerstone of the district’s financial plan.

“We were able to avoid raising residents’ taxes in this year’s budget, and one of the ways we were able to do that is by avoiding the need for a massive overhaul or repair,” she said. “That way, the money we do take in can be spent where it should be, on programs and resources.”