LAKE OZARK, Mo. - The School of the Osage School District is making progress on a strategic-planning initiative that began with a self-assessment of the district during the 2012-13 school year, which the Board of Education and administration analyzed this July.
The district's leadership, using the Baldrige model of performance excellence, has now identified seven organizational priorities for its strategic plan, which Superintendent Brent Depee announced at the district's Sept. 16 Board of Education meeting.
As the School of the Osage district continues its strategic planning, it will focus on the following goals, as listed in information provided at the board meeting:
• Student excellence, which includes ensuring achievement and college readiness for all students.
• Faculty and staff focus, which includes employee engagement and effectively managing workforce capacity and capability.
• Stakeholder focus, which includes ensuring stakeholder engagement and maximizing customer satisfaction.
• Technology, which includes using technology applications and resources to facilitate student learning, instructional delivery and effective operations.
• Communication, which includes providing systematic and effective processes for communicating with internal and external stakeholders.
• Systems focus, which includes aligning key work systems and processes with strategic and tactical direction.
• Fiscal responsibility, which includes ensuring financial resources are available to meet strategic and daily operational needs effectively and efficiently.
More than 60 participants, including faculty and staff from all parts of the district, are involved in the strategic-planning process. Action teams formed for each goal, as well as a team working on ways to measure the success of action steps, met for the first time Sept. 4 and are now in the process of brainstorming and prioritizing ideas.
For example, several teams have already discussed how to address students' college and career readiness (CCR): "The systems team is discussing CCR planning processes; the stakeholder engagement team is discussing building strategic community partnerships around CCR clusters in our own labor market; and the student excellence team is discussing ways to ensure and expand student access to real-life job and career experiences," according to information provided at the Sept. 16 board meeting.
"We believe that utilizing this approach to strategy development will help us ensure we are excellent stewards of community resources as well as preparedness for the future," the memo continued.