The District Improvement Plan - IMPROVED!

          The District and Campus Improvement Plans are critical to the success of a school district.  Without these plans, campus improvement efforts are like shooting at a moving target.  There is no continuity among the campuses and no common vision or goal.  This can result in many fragmented efforts to improve student performances, facilities, etc that will certainly be doomed to failure.  It is for this reason I chose to begin my District Improvement Plan by revising the actual school improvement process.  Once we have our district improvement procedures in place, we will be much more effective in improving student performance. 

            At HISD we have very thorough and detailed improvement plans.  The problem is that they are full of too much information and are not user friendly.  These plans are updated at the beginning of the year and put on a shelf until it is time to update for the next year.  In the same way, site-based meetings were irregular and there was no written documentation that a meeting ever occurred.  Needs assessments were completed through informal means and most meetings included very little supportive data. 

            My goal this year was to streamline the site-based meeting process and our District/Campus Improvement plans. I began this process by developing a calendar for campus and district site based meetings.  The meetings would rotate from campus meetings to district meetings each month.  Next, I reviewed the NCLB rules and developed an agenda for each month that included the topics necessary to meet the NCLB standards.  I also included common items such as school calendar, curriculum and staffing adjustments on agendas for the appropriate time of year.  I also provided a template for each committee to use to keep minutes.  Each committee keeps a binder with minutes, agendas and sign in sheets from the meetings.  A summary of the meeting will be provided to the faculty to keep them up to date on the progress of the committee.

            Finally, I attended training about how to complete a formal comprehensive needs assessment.  I developed surveys to be used formal data collection and worked closely with principals and other stakeholders to administer these surveys.

            This project has been very well received across the district.  Principals found it much easier to plan their meetings and follow through with the campus improvement process.  The superintendent appreciated the fact that he received a report of minutes and was up to speed on the improvements at every campus.

            Part of the project that we are still working on and plan to have completed by the beginning of next school year is the actual format of the Improvement Plans.  We are meeting regularly to discuss ways to simplify the plan and make it more user friendly.  I have researched the improvement plans of other districts and campuses and am in the process of creating a proposed template.  Our goal is to have an Improvement Plan that is a true working document - one that is discussed at every site-based meeting and addressed with the faculty on a regular basis.

          Overall, I believe this was a project that will be invaluable to our district.  Now that we have formal schedules, agendas and meeting procedures our site based committees will be able to focus on the true areas of improvement on our campus.  Namely the STAAR/EOC results and requirements that come with the new assessment system.