Administrators unveil strategic plan

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NAUGATUCK — The borough got its first look at the new, three-year strategic plan to improve schools.

Superintendent of Schools Sharon Locke and Assistant Superintendent of Schools Christopher Montini unveiled the plan during the Board of Education’s Oct. 8 meeting. The board will review the plan and is expected to vote on whether to accept it next month.

“We worked this summer at trying to capture the essence of who we wanted to be as a district,” Locke said.

Locke said she has been working with the district since she took over as superintendent in July to help create a plan that would encompass the district as a whole.

“I heard a lot when I got here about the amazing things that are happening in our schools, but no matter who I talked to there was sort of a consistent theme that we needed to do something to pull us together as a district. We needed a unifying statement about who we were and who we wanted to be,” Locke said.

The plan is broken into five priorities the entire district will focus on. Detailed strategies and steps are included under each priority as a roadmap to make sure the priorities are met.

Montini called the plan a living document that will continued to be updated as the district finds out what parts of it work and what parts need modification.

The first priority is to develop and continue to maintain the coherent strategic plan and ensure the entire district is working towards accomplishing the vision and mission laid out within the plan.

The second priority is to create a rigorous academic focus on continuous improvement of teaching and learning.

One of the main areas that the board has been focused on over the past two years is being addressed in the proposed plan — the graduation rate at Naugatuck High School.

The rate for the class of 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, was 78.4 percent. That rate should increase to 83 percent for the class of 2015, which graduates in June, according to the document. Administrators also want to decrease the dropout rate to less than 10 percent — it is currently around 12 percent.

Locke said all the other priorities in the plan work to support the second priority.

“We know the single most important thing we can do is to put a high quality teacher in front of students and make sure their instruction improves every single day,” Locke said.

The third and fourth priorities reflect Locke’s comments as both focus on supporting the improvement of teaching and learning.

The third priority is to create a safe, welcoming and respectful environment throughout the district and in every school that supports the continuous improvement of education and teaching.

The fourth priority is to create an organizational system that functions in support of teaching and learning.

“We’re all here to serve students,” Montini said. “We want our schools to be happy welcoming places. We won’t rest until everybody feels that way.”

The fifth priority reaches beyond the walls of schools in hopes of engaging families and the community in the district.

Montini pointed to Maple Hill Elementary School’s red carpet program on the first day of school and the fire department’s fire safety program as two good examples of things the district would like to do under this priority.

“We know … it takes a village to raise a child. And that’s more relevant now than ever before,” Montini said.

Montini said research has shown that students who have engaged families and are part of engaged communities will perform better at school.

The 19-page strategic plan is available online at www.naugy.net.

The Republican American contributed to this article.