THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290168
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 22 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
In a perfect world, as Superintendent W. Randolph Nichols sees it, schools would be havens, free of weapons, drugs and fear.
Parents would spend quality time helping their children learn. Students and teachers would use computers every day. All classes would be intellectually challenging. And there would be enough classrooms to handle growing student enrollment each year.
Like a captain guiding his ship, Nichols is setting the school system on course to achieve that vision.
With a nod from the School Board Monday night, he has launched a yearlong effort to draft a strategic plan, with specific strategies for reaching seven key goals by the turn of the century.
The goals are: ensuring school safety, stiffening educational standards, boosting efficiency, strengthening staff training, increasing the use of technology, broadening community involvement in education and providing enough building space to meet the system's needs.
School officials want the whole community to be involved in drafting the strategic plan, directly or indirectly.
``Our notion is that if you truly want community support, you have to involve the community and help them understand what you're trying to do,'' said William S. Myers, assistant superintendent for personnel and support services.
Myers now is looking for community volunteers to join a planning team, which will develop a mission statement for the school system and then will oversee the drafting of the strategic plan. The planning team will have about 30 members, representative of as many community groups as possible.
Myers also is looking for people to sit on a series of subcommittees, called action teams, one for each of the seven goals. The teams will begin in January a four-month process of gathering data and setting strategies for achieving each of the goals. The teams will have anywhere from 15 to 50 members.
In all, Myers said he expected as many as 250 school system workers and community members to participate in writing the strategic plan.
The plan is due to be finished by next summer.
The plan will have a major impact on the city, because it will drive the direction of education for the foreseeable future and will have an effect on how much money the School Board requests from City Council for operating expenses and building projects.
``With the help of the community, I think we can achieve our objectives,'' said Penny G. Goodin, assistant in school improvement planning. MEMO: For information about volunteering on one of the committees involved in
drafting the school system's strategic plan, call 547-1186.
by CNB