Miami-Dade leaders outline new strategic-plan framework, set May 2026 target

Miami-Dade County School Board officials and district staff on Oct. 20 reviewed a proposed framework for a new districtwide strategic plan that staff say will be grounded in community input and focused on a short set of strategic measures alongside a broader performance dashboard.

Superintendent Jerry said the effort will treat the district as part of a larger "educational ecosystem" that includes families, community partners, higher education and local businesses, and that "this is a strategic plan that we are all building together" with broad public engagement. Tiffany Pauline, the district's strategic-planning lead, and her team described a planning approach that separates strategy from performance so the district can track a limited set of strategic objectives while continuing to measure day-to-day operational outcomes.

The planning team told the board that the process drew on nearly 200,000 completed surveys, including roughly 70,000 Portrait of a Graduate responses and 81,000 student-perspective surveys, plus 65 focus groups (about 548 participants) and Canvas Miami pilot engagements in one school from each voting district. Mahathi Tonk said sessions were conducted in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to broaden inclusion.

Alex Ramirez described the framework's design: strategic measures will be aligned to a small number of "core challenges" (reframed as opportunities) and use an objectives-and-key-results (OKR) format; a separate set of KPIs will monitor core business outcomes such as student achievement, enrollment and financial stability. Ramirez said the plan will include "guardrails" (a guiding policy) that clarify which actions the district will pursue and which it will not.

Board members and staff agreed to continue iterative engagement. Staff proposed a December workshop to finalize the Portrait of a Graduate and to discuss mission, vision and core challenges, with a goal of returning a draft plan to the board for consideration in May 2026. The team said it would gather further board feedback via one-on-one meetings and a thought-exchange survey to refine the district's shared purpose.

What happens next: staff will synthesize board feedback from the Oct. 20 workshop, run targeted follow-ups with board members and present a refined draft at the next workshop and in spring committee/board meetings ahead of a May 2026 plan delivery to the board.