Nash County Public Schools unveils draft 2025–2030 strategic plan with measurable targets

Dr. Royce, superintendent, presented a draft Nash County Public Schools strategic plan for 2025–2030 and asked the board committee to forward the plan to the full board for approval.

The plan sets a new vision — “together we empower all students to achieve excellence, lead with purpose, and thrive in the ever changing world” — and a mission stating NCPS will “partner with families, staff, and the community to support every student with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities for lifelong success,” Dr. Royce said.

The draft organizes district priorities into five strategic pillars: academic success; capital management; healthy, safe learning environment; celebrating student excellence; and family and community partnerships. For academics, the plan sets multi-year performance goals, including increasing overall proficiency by 5 percentage points each year “for each subgroup,” meeting expected growth in English language arts, math and science, raising Career and Technical Education (CTE) credential attainment to 70% and growing work-based learning participation to 400 students annually. The plan also sets a five‑year target of a 92% graduation rate within five years and calls for at least 80% of NCPS preschool participants to meet kindergarten benchmarks on mClass assessments.

On staffing, the district proposes reducing overall teacher turnover by 10% compared with the 2024–25 school year and cutting beginning‑teacher (BT) turnover by 15%, using strategies such as targeted recruitment, mentor support and professional development. For school culture and discipline, the plan aims to reduce instructional days lost to out‑of‑school suspensions by 25% and raise implementation fidelity of behavior and SEL (social‑emotional learning) supports to 90% across schools.

The draft includes measurable monitoring: state and local assessments, graduation rates, school performance grades, district walk‑throughs, credential counts, parent‑contact metrics and other data sources. Dr. Royce said the district will review these goals twice each semester to make data‑informed adjustments.

Board members asked for more detail on current parent contact accuracy (the presentation sets a five‑year target of 50% accuracy in Infinite Campus). Dr. Royce said staff will provide the current baseline to the board. A committee motion to send the draft strategic plan to the full board passed by voice vote.

The superintendent said the draft will be used by principals to align school improvement plans with district goals so schools and the district “are all talking the same language.”

Looking ahead, the full board will consider the strategic plan at its next meeting; the committee did not set further changes in committee beyond the monitoring cadence described during the presentation.