District superintendent outlines strategic plan progress, data dashboard and implementation priorities

Superintendent Julie Nielsen presented an update on South Washington County Schools’ strategic plan during the Nov. 6 board workshop, reviewing the district "vision card," the surveys and data that underpin it, and the five priority areas guiding implementation.

Nielsen said the strategic-plan process began in 2022 with broad participation from staff, students and community members and resulted in five core values: connections, integrity, equity, excellence and innovation. She described the district vision card as a monitoring tool that places measures along a continuum from "requires intervention" to "vision achieved," driven by perception and assessment data.

Nielsen identified the data sources used to populate the vision card: the Minnesota Student Survey (administered in grades 5, 8, 9 and 11), a Morris Leatherman survey administered triannually, assessment data including MAP and MCA, and a district-developed South Washington County Schools survey for grades 5–12 that filled gaps in topics not covered by other instruments. Nielsen said the district had about an 80% response rate on the Minnesota Student Survey in the relevant grades and called the district survey a perception dataset with roughly 1,763 community respondents and about 54% staff participation across bargaining groups.

On student outcomes, Nielsen noted that reading and math currently "require intervention" and that curriculum and assessment teams are working on targeted improvement. She cited specific perception findings the district tracks, such as students reporting they "almost always or often" have class schedules that help them be successful (82%) and 90% of students agreeing teachers care about them. For families, she said 65.1% reported their child had experienced personalized learning aligned with learning style (categorized as "making progress") and that only 47.1% of families felt familiar with district policies and procedures (placed in "requires intervention"). Nielsen said those gaps point to opportunities in communication and family engagement.

Nielsen outlined implementation priorities tied to the vision card: continued focus on literacy (including paraprofessional training and K–12 literacy screening), implementing a guaranteed viable curriculum and consistent delivery of core instruction supported by professional learning communities, rollout of a data-warehousing system (EduClimber) to combine multiple measures into one database, expansion of career pathways through community partnerships and work on internal systems such as Skyward Q for finance/HR. She also noted operational items: Minnesota Paid Leave implementation and ongoing work to expand multilingual communication and a language access plan.

Board members asked questions about Skyward Q and other operational items. Chris (the district business services lead) described Skyward Q as an enterprise resource planning-style system for finance, payroll and HR and noted that Skyward plans to sunset older versions across Minnesota districts, prompting district evaluation of a migration timeline.

Nielsen said next steps include continuing departmental improvement plans, updating the district vision card over time and posting strategic-plan updates on the district website. She emphasized that the district is focusing on strengthening the work already underway rather than adding new initiatives.