District staff presented a board preview of a five-year strategic plan to guide work from 2026 through 2031, emphasizing a narrowed set of primary KPIs and an iterative rollout.

Presenters said the plan—branded in documents as MMSD Students Together or MMSD Excellence Together—rests on the board-approved mission and guiding commitments and includes five focus areas: future-ready student experiences; operational alignment and improvement; professional excellence and talent development; connectedness and well-being; and family, community and industry partnerships. The district intends to use a single primary KPI for each focus area, supplemented by secondary measures, and to disaggregate indicators where possible.

Staff described an extensive community-engagement process that informed plan development: superintendent school visits (47 schools, >500 staff, ~450 students), steering committee sessions (80+ community members), focus groups and a community survey that together produced roughly 2,500 inputs. An equity review and iterative drafts led to refinements of strategy language and KPI selection.

On measurement, the district said it is aligning several primary KPIs with the Council of Great City Schools where feasible and added that the KPI framework is intended to monitor progress on focus-area strategies rather than provide a direct one-to-one correlation to the board’s three performance objectives. "KPIs are telling us, ‘are we making progress on these strategies’ — and we assume that progress on strategies will, directly or indirectly, move our performance objectives," a presenter said.

Board members asked for more clarity about how KPIs will inform budget priorities and requested written documentation: district-wide caseload ratios, baseline KPI methodology and scheduled data deliverables. Presenters said baseline data will be collected during 2025–26, targets will be set after baseline collection, and schools will draft aligned school improvement plans in 2027–28 for implementation in subsequent years.

Board members also requested additional program-evaluation detail (how the district will assess whether specific strategies are working) and suggested the district bring further analytic detail to the board during budget planning. Presenters said supplemental measures and school-level metrics will continue to be tracked to provide a wider picture of progress beyond primary KPIs.

Ending: The board received the preview and asked for follow-up materials, including baseline data, caseload ratios and demographic breakdowns, to support budget decisions and future oversight.