Pasco board study session directs staff to ‘tune up’ district strategic plan rather than full rebuild

Superintendent Whitney told the Pasco School Board of Directors during a study session that district staff recommend a strategic-plan “tune up” rather than a full-scale rebuild, citing current budget tensions and limited organizational bandwidth. “Instead of engaging in this land and replan year…we're really suggesting doing a tune up,” Whitney said.

The recommendation matters because the district’s strategic improvement plan serves as an “anchor and a compass” for spending and priorities, Whitney said, and a major overhaul would require outside consultants and significant resources that the district may not be able to commit while facing financial uncertainty. She told the board a full rebuild typically uses broad stakeholder engagement and an outside consultant, with third-party costs she estimated as low as $20,000 and commonly in the $40,000–$60,000 range.

Board members at the session supported the refresh approach. Directors asked that the operational departments’ goals be integrated into the plan and asked for more specific academic benchmarks under the plan’s existing “we will” statements. Whitney said staff will return with a narrower report, a proposed timeline and recommended language for board consideration.

Whitney described the district plan’s structure and history: a five-year implementation framework launched after stakeholder work led by Evergreen and Associates (approved by the board in June 2015), interrupted by COVID, and set up around five “outrageous outcomes” — aspirational 100% goals focused on reading, math, on-track-for-graduation measures, graduation with a career path, and meaningful student connections. She said the plan is visible in every district building, in English and Spanish, and that the district has existing tools that can support a tune up, including an AIR audit of the district MTSS framework, a needs assessment and fidelity rubrics, and results from a 2023–24 superintendent listening tour that yielded thousands of responses.

Board members and student representatives voiced general agreement that a refresh would be the best use of time and money now. One board member said they favored comparing Pasco to districts with similar poverty and ELL (English-language learner) levels rather than wealthier districts. “I would love to see us above average in all of our different demographics,” a board member said, urging benchmarks that reflect Pasco’s student population.

Whitney said the refresh would use existing “fingerprints” of prior engagement — employee advisory council action plans, MTSS materials, Journey of a Graduate (formerly Portrait of a Graduate) competencies — and would aim to add specificity under each existing goal rather than rewrite the bulleted goal language. She also said operational department goals (work currently underway with Assistant Superintendents Raul and Sarah) will be incorporated into the refresh, though officials have not yet decided whether to add a separate sixth goal or embed operations within the current five goals.

As next steps, Whitney asked the board to formally confirm direction so staff can schedule specific work: calendar review of the Board Progress Monitoring Report policy (the board’s governance mechanism for academic benchmark reporting), finalize operational benchmarks with departments, and produce a timeline intended to conclude the refresh and present recommended board action by the district’s last meeting in June (Whitney said the work should be solidified and approved by the last meeting in June). She also said that if conditions stabilize in about three years, the district would consider a full rebuild with an outside consultant.

Discussion at the session distinguished between (a) discussion of options and evidence (tools and past engagement), (b) the direction given by the board to proceed with a refresh, and (c) the formal actions that will follow in later public board meetings where staff will present specific proposals for board approval. Whitney said the board will have approval authority over any revisions to the board monitoring policy and final plan language.

Background details raised during the discussion: the current plan was designed as a five-year framework beginning after the 2015 approval, was paused during COVID, and is now in a “land and replan” year; staff flagged that a rebuild requires heavy alignment across the system (school improvement plans, state of the school reviews, operational departments) and is therefore a much larger lift than producing a written plan alone. Whitney emphasized that stakeholder credibility depends on aligning plan ambitions with sustainable resources and that the tune up approach is intended to produce a plan the district can implement given current fiscal constraints.

Whitney invited additional input from board members ahead of a future presentation and said staff will return with more detailed timeline options, suggested operational benchmarks, and recommended updates to the Board Progress Monitoring Report policy for the board to approve.

The study session ended with the board indicating unanimous support for the refresh approach; no formal vote was recorded during the study session.