Doctor Camille opened discussion of district goal work and introduced Jen Slavic of EAB, who led a presentation on aligning board and district goals and on a research-based process to increase the likelihood that initiatives succeed.

The presentation traced the district’s work back to a strategic plan approved in February 2020 and noted a recent $110,000 congressional grant titled “Sustained Leadership” awarded to support post‑COVID leadership and engagement efforts. Slavic described EAB’s research on “high performance districts,” including eight hallmarks such as shared vision and goals, role-clarity, data-driven decision making and investment in leadership development. She said EAB’s work aims to help the superintendent’s cabinet cascade district strategic priorities into department and school objectives and to reduce duplicated or conflicting efforts.

Slavic and Superintendent Camille explained the district’s proposed three pillars for the year — students, staff and systems — and described a process for prioritizing objectives: assess urgency, feasibility for completion this year, and impact on other work, then select 1–3 critical objectives per cabinet member. The cabinet size was given as about 15 people. The presenters said the cabinet has drafted critical objectives tied to the pillars and plans to finalize departmental and school goals by September.

On accountability and monitoring, staff described monthly check-ins for department heads and quarterly report-outs to the full board, plus an internal dashboard intended to be community-facing. The district said it will ask departments to state who is responsible, who is consulted and who is informed for each initiative, and will run pre-mortem analyses to anticipate obstacles. Staff said monthly check-ins will replace a less-frequent cadence of only beginning/mid/end-year updates.

Board members pressed for clearer public-facing language and stronger community engagement. Several trustees suggested folding communication and community input explicitly into board goals so the board’s work reflects constituency priorities. Committee members and staff singled out attendance (chronic absenteeism) and a two-tier MTSS approach as high-impact objectives likely to move other academic outcomes. Staff said attendance work is already assigned to a specific team and that MTSS objectives appear under the students pillar.

Draft numeric targets discussed during the meeting included a staff retention target described as a 15% improvement (staff said this figure is draft and the specific metric is still being refined) and a district-level “stretch growth” target for students described in the packet as an increase to “85%” of stretch growth; staff acknowledged the phrasing is provisional and said they will check baseline data and clarify the metric before finalizing goals.

The meeting included brief comments about systems work: Aspen (student information system) and two-factor authentication for network/email access were noted as part of the systems pillar. Staff described the need to align technology tasks (for example, Aspen integration) with other department objectives to avoid duplicative work.

Members of the cabinet who attended said the sessions with EAB felt collaborative and helped surface where departments had been “stepping on each other’s toes.” Board members also asked for a translation of technical acronyms and measurement language into plain language for public-facing communications.

EAB offered to return with research on strategic planning and recommended workshops to help the board and district engage community stakeholders during any strategic-plan update. Staff said they will distribute the goals packet and visuals, continue cabinet work through September, and bring quarterly progress reports and a dashboard to the board.

No formal action was taken on adopting board goals at this meeting. The only formal motion recorded in the transcript was to adjourn, moved by Committee member Bent and seconded by Committee member Turner; the motion passed by voice vote.

Ending: Staff will finalize departmental and district goals for presentation in September and pursue monthly internal monitoring plus quarterly board reports and a community-facing dashboard; EAB will provide additional materials about strategic-planning options and workshops.