Strategic planning is making new goals for the district by reviewing past goals and plans. This year, the Board of Education and FHSD’s strategic planning committee are looking over their current strategic plan and making a new one for the next five years in the district. The strategic planning team helped with the plans from August to December. The committee is made up of 60 members from all over the district, including staff members, students and parents. The Board of Education and some district staffers will take over for second semester to work on implementing the strategic plan.

“The vision of the district is any fine details that we can set for the long term,” Chad Lange, Vice President of the Board of Education, said. “We tend to focus on things that revolve around students so we can set goals for them.”

There are five goals set in place in the new strategic plan. The strategic planning committee met several times and planned the district’s mission, values, visions and goals to make strategic action plans for the next five years. They planned this out with a three-step process of asking questions like, “Where are we now?,” “What do we want to be?” and “How will we get there?”

The first goal is centered around college, career and life success. This is to prepare students academically and involve them in college and career discussions so they can be prepared for what’s to come when high school ends.

The second goal is aiming toward engaging learning environments. The committee wants to cultivate a learning environment that can be collaborative, innovative and inclusive for the students.

The third goal is going to be concentrated on the staff, leaders and organizational performance. This is so employee development, leadership and rewards systems can be improved.

The fourth goal is to engage family and community partnerships to extend learning opportunities between home and school.

The final goal is to ensure facilities are safe, secure and well-maintained to meet the needs of 21st century learning.

“These goals that we’ve set are the draft of the strategic plan,” Matt Deichmann, Chief of Communications and community related officer, said. “This is the big picture. These are the things that we want to do and if everybody’s in agreement to that then we will look at how we accomplish these goals. That’s what we will focus on second semester.”

The plan will voice the opinions of the strategic planning committee and some additional parents, teachers and students of the district. Throughout fall of 2017, meetings were held at FHHS, FHN and FHC to gather some views from the community. From there, the district sent out various surveys to students, parents and the community. This was by social media and the district website to get any other information from people in the district they might need to make changes to the strategic plan.

“We like to be a data-driven district,” Deichmann said. “We like to make decisions based upon hard facts. That was sort of the context for our community as we sought their input in the process moving forward.”

First semester was dedicated to making the goals and plans. The Board of Education will lead second semester’s planning, which will be focused around how the goals will be carried through and implemented into the district.

“Strategic planning will be the most important thing that the district will be doing this year,” Rene Cope, President of the Board of Education, said. “It’s very important to know what we should be focusing on for the years coming. The district needs to have an organized plan that will benefit us and help us grow. We want students, teachers and staff to benefit from these new goals.”