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Blaine County district urges five-year strategic plans, says process boosts accountability
Summary
Blaine County School District leaders told the House Committee on Education they replaced an annual continuous improvement plan with a five-year strategic plan built from broad community input and weekly implementation checks.
Laura Stone, chair of the Blaine County School District 61 board, and Superintendent Jim Fouty told the House Committee on Education on Feb. 18 that their district adopted a five-year strategic plan to align board agendas, leadership meetings and staff work to community priorities.
"Each item on our meeting agendas ... is linked to an item on our strategic plan," Stone said, explaining that the board posts the plan in schools and the district newsletter and uses it to keep decisions focused on long-term student achievement goals. She asked the committee to consider the value of strategic planning as a living document rather than a one-year compliance exercise.
Superintendent Fouty described how the district gathered extensive community input: more than 700 survey responses, multiple roundtable discussions — including two held in Spanish for primarily Spanish-speaking residents — and community meetings held across district towns. Fouty said the district held about seven meetings in as many weeks while developing the plan and that meetings typically drew about 30 people.
Fouty also referenced a prior 2014 legislative change that originally required strategic plans and said the law was later amended to require continuous improvement plans instead. "Continuous improvement plans ... are 1 year plans and they're focused on measurable outcomes for student achievement," he said, adding that strategic plans retain those measurable goals while also covering facilities, staffing, communication and finances.
He recommended treating a strategic plan as a "living document," updating annual goals tied to the five-year framework and revisiting community input regularly so the plan can adjust to new priorities. The district ties superintendent evaluation to progress on the strategic plan and monitors items weekly in school leadership and cabinet meetings, Fouty said.
Stone and Fouty did not ask the committee to change statute during the hearing; they said they wanted to share their approach and to offer the district as a model for boards that want deeper community engagement in planning.
