Granton Interim Administrator Discusses District's Strategic Plan

Wednesday, December 9th, 2020 -- 1:01 PM

-The Granton School Board and Interim District Administrator is working on a Strategic Plan for the Granton School District.

I spoke with Interim Administrator James Kuchta and he talked about the plan in more detail.

Question:  “Can you talk about the Strategic Plan, how it started and how it’s looking so far?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “I started here August 10th as Interim District Administrator for Granton Area Schools and have been talking with our School Board about working on a guiding document that we can use for decision making, both short term and long term into the future.  I met with the board on September 30th in a School Board Retreat and we did some professional development and talked about future planning for the school district and talked about strategic planning so that we can get input from the community, from students, from staff, and parents and use that information to create this guiding document by the end of this school year so that we have something to use for long range decision making.”

“Since then, I’ve been working with Dr. Mike Richie, who’s a former Superintendent of the Year, and works with Superintendent Search Firms and has done strategic planning across the nation.  He’s current Interim Superintendent at Tomorrow River School in Amherst.  So, Dr. Richie and I are co-facilitating the strategic planning process and we interviewed each of the 5 board members in Zoom meetings and then we held meetings with all of our teaching staff.  Two different meetings that our teachers were split into and then, also, our support staff.  All of our support staff were a separate focus group.  So, we’ve had these different focus groups.  Now we’ll be talking with our student body.  All of our high school students and interviewing them to gain their perspective on their opinions of the greatest strengths are of the district, the most significant issues, the comparability to area school districts, and how they feel about the significance of the impact on student learning that they have.”

“Then we’ll put together this plan based on all of these focus groups and we’re going to create a steering committee, which we’ve got a lot of different people contacted that we’ll be meeting with.  So, that’s where we are right now.”

Question:  “I think it’s unique that you’re speaking with the high school students.  I think they tend to get overlooked when a district is talking about their future.”

Mr. Kuchta:  “We definitely want the student input because they’ve got their own perspective on what, they believe, the knowledge skills and characteristics that are needed.  That’s one of the questions that we have for all of the focus groups and then what their aspirations are for the school district in the future.  And I’ve met many alumni from Granton who are working in the area or the Marshfield area and they are very proud of the accomplishments of what they’ve done and what so many different people have done.  So, we want to get the good word out.”

Question:  “When it comes to community participation, are you going to be doing a public comment meeting or survey of some kind down the line?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “Yes, we’re going to be doing both.  So, one of our focus groups, and you know it’s been difficult with all the COVID related things that we have, but, like I said, we did Zoom meetings with our individual board members and we did meet in-person at the school with our staff, three different groups.  And we’ll meet in person with students.  But with the community, we had intended on starting with our overall larger Steering Committee for strategic planning this month, but, because of the Governor’s order and request to stay home, we’re honoring that, respecting that, and following that.”

“But we hope to get started in January with our community focus group and then our overall larger representative Strategic Plan Steering Committee.  We are also putting a survey that will be out to the community online next week.  That will be available and we want our community to know that we are seeking input from everyone in case they can’t make it to our focus group meetings so they can respond to just a real quick 21 question survey and then 4 questions of long answer responses if they choose too.”

Question:  “You already touched on this, but what goals are hoping to accomplish for the district with this plan?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “So the overall goal, as I had mentioned previously, is that we want to come up with a guiding document so that we’re not making just, and when I say we, as a school district and school board, we want to have something to use or refer back to for decisions.  Decisions for finances, for facility buildings and grounds, for bus or other bigger purchases, and for the curriculum, and for the technology.  Because, currently, like many school districts, you have to make decisions as you go and if you don’t have a guiding document or strategic plan, then you just make random decisions as they come up.  And it doesn’t always weigh the big picture where we want to keep the big picture in mind and have a good long range plan for Granton and Granton students.”

“I’ve heard so many positive comments from the community.  The level of support, the positive things, the small class sizes, the excellent curriculum, the super star teachers that we have.  So, we definitely want to promote that and keep that in the forefront.”

Question:  “When are you hoping to have this completed?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “We’re planning to finish this, initially, by April or May and we’ll see.  By the end of the school year, I would say.  Our hope is that by the end of May that we have this whole strategic planning process completed and we have our document to take to the school board.  The Steering Committee for Strategic Planning will ultimately take this document that we put together for all areas, finance/building and grounds/transportation/student curriculum/technology/etc., for their approval.”

Question:  “Anything else?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “No, I think we covered it very well.  Just as a reminder, we will have that survey available that we can send to anyone that requests it, but it will also be on our school website.  It’ll just be a link they can click on and answer questions.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.