Minooka CHSD 111 begins five‑year strategic‑planning process; board narrows focus areas

Minooka Community High School District 111 trustees on Jan. 29 opened a multi‑month strategic‑planning process to produce a recommendation to the board by May 2025. The board and administrative team discussed draft core values, a proposed mission and a short calendar of public activities, surveys and a two‑day committee workshop in April.

Why it matters: The strategic plan will guide district priorities for the next five years and set goals that will translate into administrative action plans. The facilitator said the process is intended both as a planning tool and a public‑relations exercise to engage stakeholders.

Consultant Bob Madonia, who will lead the facilitation, walked trustees through a timeline that begins with the board‑level focus‑area discussion held that night, moves into a public survey and volunteer recruitment period, then proceeds to a March training meeting for board and administration and two days of committee work April 4–5. Madonia said the plan aims to return a recommended set of goals to the board at the May board meeting of 2025.

Madonia described the approach that the committee will use: small‑group identification of five prioritized items per focus area on day one, cross‑table re‑prioritization and a final consensus exercise on day two. He emphasized that outcomes from prior planning efforts will be respected and that the process includes annual review and public reporting of results.

Board and staff input that night produced candidate focus headings and suggested priorities for the committee’s work. The list of suggested topics included improved attendance, a hybrid/block scheduling option, career and technical education and career preparation (including apprenticeships), a master facility plan with financing implications, pride/community identity, community partnerships, student safety and wellbeing (including mental health and social‑emotional learning), opportunities and extracurricular expansion, sharing/monetizing facilities, staff recruitment and retention, professional development, transparency and public communications, continued investment in technology and fiscal responsibility to taxpayers.

Madonia said the district will publish a stakeholder survey for three weeks to gather broader feedback and will provide committee volunteers with background materials; administrators and at least one board member will be assigned to each focus‑area table during the April sessions. He recommended limiting the number of survey questions to encourage responses and noted options to provide paper copies for community members without internet access.

Quotes and attribution: Bob Madonia, the consultant facilitating the plan, told the board, “we are focusing on a recommendation to the board for the May board meeting of 2025.”

Context and clarifications: Board members asked whether facility and finance topics should be combined; consultants said districts sometimes treat those as a combined focus area because facilities planning and capital financing are interdependent. The facilitator will prepare a draft of the focus‑area headings and the raw brainstormed inputs and circulate them to board members the next day for refinement.

Ending: The board set March 19 for a preparatory session with the administration and scheduled the April 4–5 committee workshops; the facilitator and administration will produce the stakeholder survey and a detailed schedule for committee recruitment and outreach.