On June 29, 2023, the District 303 board approved a new strategic plan for the next five years (2023-27). The plan focuses on “providing students with the skills necessary to participate in the post-secondary pathway that they choose,” hoping to increase the sense of belonging and achievement of the district.
The plan hopes to increase the feeling of belonging for students in the district by appreciating, accepting, validating and treating every individual fairly. “Culture of Dignity,” one of the plans implemented, proposes the idea that every person has value regardless of their background and circumstances, and it is their humanity that gives them their value. In order to make these ideas prevalent in the district, the plan aims to create a learning environment that includes ‘culturally competent’ and caring staff. When ensuring that the staff hired are culturally competent, the board explains that it does not set quotas relating to race or ethnicity and rather uses ‘The Danielson Framework,’ which looks at behaviors that the teachers exhibit. The staff will be deemed culturally competent based on their student group results with the new success indicators. The indicators are the results of state assessments, the average grades of students in the course, surveys about attendance and belonging and student discipline referrals. The goal is to have an environment where staff and students are supported socially and emotionally.
Another large focus of the new strategic plan is to increase achievement of the students by ensuring that students have at least 95% attendance, a B average or higher, a 1080 or above on the SAT and at least 1 AP/Dual or Industry Credit class by the end of senior year. The district has seen a correlation between AP courses and the likelihood of graduating college in 4 years: According to a College Board research, students who get a 1 or 2 on an AP test have better outcomes than ones who did not take an AP . The board says that many students like the difficulty that AP courses present. Although the AP program is already very useful to students’ futures, it is never perfect, so the board has set forth improvements that can be made to increase the usefulness of the program. They propose to increase enrollment into these courses by getting rid of certain levels of classes such as English 10 Honors and replacing it with English 10: AP Seminar. The board also wants to use data such as AP potential to show students that AP courses can be for anyone. Another strategy for the board to increase enrollment is to allow freshmen to take more AP courses than before, such as AP Computer Science Principles, which was explicitly talked about in a board meeting as a class that they want to offer to incoming freshmen. Not only do they want to increase courses allowed to freshmen but also courses in general: The board wants to include a new course, AP Precalculus in 2023-2024 course offerings.
The board is hopeful that the new five year plan will help the district grow as a whole and prepare students for their futures.
