By Reagan Hoverman

At the Monday evening, June 20, River Falls School Board meeting, the board unanimously approved a new five-year strategic plan for the district, which was created through student, staff and community input.

The River Falls School District is starting anew with a strategic plan that is focused on five central goals, and eight core values and is slated to be implemented for the 2022-23 school year and run through the 2027 academic calendar.

The 2022-23 plan is a return to the strategic plan system that River Falls had used from 2015-2020. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic which shook up schools, daily life and the entire country, a new strategic plan was put on the back-burner while the district dealt with adapting to that ever-changing pandemic.

Now two years removed from that, the River Falls School District took a step back and began developing a new strategic plan to be implemented in 2022-23. That process began this spring and involved multiple surveys to students, staff and the larger River Falls community to generate common goals and values for the future of the district.

In attention to surveys, the district also hosted listening sessions in the spring, which were designed to allow all interested parties – especially community members – to have their voices heard regarding the future of the school district and what is most important for the children in attendance. Those surveys and listening sessions generated over 2,500 stakeholder responses that were considered by the school district. River Falls superintendent Jamie Benson spoke about crafting the new strategic plan.

“We held three public listening sessions in March, we conducted surveys with students, staff and with the community around that same time frame this spring,” Benson said. “We took those results and developed some common themes that came from those results as well as some of those ongoing things we have in place.”

As Benson presented the strategic plan to the school board and those in attendance, he began detailing the intricacies of the outline, which began with the mission and vision of the River Falls School District. The mission reads as follows: “Inspire all students through challenging, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences, in a safe and collaborative environment.”

In addition to the mission, the strategic plan states a vision that the district hopes to follow and archives during the five years that the plan is in place. It reads as follows: “In partnership with families and the community, the School District of River Falls is an innovative PK-12 grade educational leader committed to the academic, social, emotional, and physical well-being of every student.”

After Benson provided introductory comments regarding the mission and vision of the school district and strategic plan, he began delving into some of the specifics which include eight main values.

According to the presented plan, the values include students first, people matter, equity, respect, integrity, excellence, innovation, and communication. Those values, although not explicitly stated in all previous strategic plans, have been the backbone of previously successful plans from 2015-2020 and the plan before that from 2010-2015.

Throughout the last dozen years, River Falls has had, according to Benson, two highly successful strategic plans that served as the catalyst for some of the most important innovations in River Falls School District history.

“A community, adult education program in this district was the result of strategic planning,” Benson said. “A kids club program, academic improvements with science, technology, engineering and math, our high school CTE Department under Mr. Luedtke’s leadership and the things they’ve advanced with curriculum and program offerings with CVTC and the University, allowing students to have dual credit and vocational trade opportunities.”

Benson stated that the reason those past strategic plans were successful is because of the continued desire for opinions from students, staff and those in the community that strive to make River Falls School District the best that it can be.

He moved on to speak about the five crucial pillar goals of the 2022-23 strategic plan which include: holding high expectations for student learning. Providing a safe, welcoming, and healthy school environment, attracting, developing and retaining high-quality staff, providing life readiness skills and upholding operational excellence.

Each goal also has action steps that will help achieve the larger benchmarks and generate success. For example, the first goal of holding high expectations for student learning includes action steps such as supporting collaborative teaching culture, identifying and monitoring academic readiness benchmarks, and increasing student career and college planning experiences.

Those smaller objectives operate under the umbrella of those five pillars and are designed to create guidelines as to how to achieve the district’s five major goals in the next five years of operation. Benson made it clear that these goals are a large undertaking and will take time because he and the district want to get it right.

“We’re not going to bite off more than we can chew or take on too many things at the same time and do OK or good, but that we can do excellent,” Benson said. “That’s why it’s a five-year plan and not a one-year plan or a two-year plan. It’s going to take time.”

After Benson finished presenting the new strategic plan, he opened it up to the school board for questions or comments. Board member Robert Casey began by asking about how the strategic plan will be measured in terms of meeting goals because some of the goals and objectives are hard to quantify.

“It’s a great question and something that we need to hold ourselves accountable,” Benson said. “Some of these are written in a way that is measurable and others you may say aren’t as easily identified as a way to measure. We have to work through that with our administration. If we’re going to hold ourselves accountable, we need to hold ourselves accountable and measure what we treasure.”

The school board raised a second question regarding how often the administration would provide updates to the board during the five-year tenure of the strategic plan. Benson stated that those details can still be adjusted, but confirmed that there would be an annual in-depth report to the school board.

“My direct answer is a formal annual (report),” Benson said. “More often than that if the board would like. We want to hold ourselves accountable as a district and we want to be public about that. We owe that to the community to give them our scorecard and keep them updated. There is more room for conversation if we want to do more (often).”

School board president Stacy Johnson Myers spoke favorably of the new strategic plan and thanked Benson for his work to help build the plan. She stated that this is a strategic plan that truly encapsulates what the district wants to do.

“I think that the mission, vision and values represent our community very well,” Johnson Myers said. “I think that the values in those eight things epitomize what we are trying to do and be. I think it does a good job of articulating those things.”

After questions were answered and the board had no more questions, the board unanimously approved the 2022-2027 strategic plan, which can be found on the River Falls School District website.