Cascade School's Long Term Strategic Plan
...and a change in my email delivery system
Dear Friend and Community Member,
Great progress has been made around our District’s long-term strategic plan and I want to share that news with you. But first, you’ll notice I made some changes to the delivery format of my emails. My local network has grown to the point where my homegrown (and free) email service couldn’t send to all of you at once, so I needed help. I found it with Substack. Don’t think that these changes diminish the sincerity and genuine nature of my communications to you –rather, they make it easier on my end to keep in touch and provide you with the updates that you expect from your neighbor and school board rep. I appreciate you growing with me in this role and for your support in successfully representing you!
Public education – here and nationally – finds itself at a crossroads that will forever change and define what a successful school looks like. The vast majority of people and parents expect individualized education for their youth (around 80% nationally as far as anyone can tell). I was sent an article about this belief this morning, and you can read it here. The article summarizes the findings that even people whose political identity require them to disagree with someone based on the other person’s political identity, the vast majority of people agree with each other on even the most divisive subjects of today. The purpose of public schools is one of those topics. The collectively held purpose of public schools in the past was to educate most people to a baseline standard that most people could achieve. Well, that has changed drastically, as this author has found! Technology paired with advancements in educational law enables education of the individual, and society expects this to be the primary means of educating the whole. The expectation has become to educate the individual student to that student’s highest ability rather than to the ability of the average student.
The purpose of the long-term strategic plan is to ensure 100% alignment between our school and the collectively held values, beliefs, and expectations of our community. Our community goes beyond the 80% mentioned in the above article, as our solicitations for strategic planning input show nearly perfect solidarity. This solidarity makes the District’s purpose very clear, and makes it relatively easy to educate Cascade’s youth to their highest individual potential - even in a group setting. After all, THIS is the attraction of small schools and small class sizes: individualized learning and attention.
Here is where you can view the draft vision statement and the four core objectives that you have tasked the District with. The next phase is to incorporate the feedback we get in the next three weeks, and then to further develop the core objectives into timelines and academic programs. If you have feedback regarding the long-term strategic plan outcomes thus far, please reach out to your favorite trustee or the Superintendent, Joni.
Until next time,
Brad Howlett