The Evanston Township District 202 School Board is seeking public input on its goals for the next three years.
While the goals, themselves, are rather general, the draft also includes the targets and measures by which the board can assess its progress towards achieving the goals.
At its September 10 meeting, the board wants to receive public feedback on the goals during the public comment portion of the meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. in Room N-112 of the high school, at 1600 Dodge Ave.
Here are the six broad goals included in the draft:
1. Increase each student’s academic trajectory as demonstrated through multiple measures.
2. Provide individualized supports, programs, services, and curricula to ensure that each student will demonstrate significant academic and social-emotional growth during the experience at ETHS.
3. Create a student-centered facility using 21st Century resources to support the needs of our diverse learning community.
4. Provide consistent and stable financial stewardship assuring: excellent education and opportunity for each student; reasonable property taxes; leveraging and optimizing resources; and values-based, cost effective allocation of resources.
5. Strengthen relationships throughout the community which enrich engagement among all stakeholders and enhance student learning and well-being, and assure full continuity of effort with District 65.
6. Maximize the reputation of ETHS.
The targets are not always consistent — one goal sets a target of having all students graduate within four years, while another sets a target of having them all graduate within five years.
Other targets range from having 80 percent of graduates go on to higher education to having all students enrolled in at least one extra-curricular activity.
For the financial stewardship goal targets include maintaining the district’s AAA bond rating and limiting the district’s share of the total Evanston property tax bill to less than 25.5 percent.
The district’s tax levy amounts to 27.15 percent of the property taxes facing most Evanston residents this year.
The board has already taken a number of steps to involve the public in the development of the six goals, including a public survey conducted in February and a public goals planning workshop in March.
You can view a copy of the full goals document below.
Goals?
I honestly doubt that many of our citizens understand the words or meaning of the ETHS published 'goals.'
Those words/meanings will insure very little 'public' input to the process of educating our students.
Boilerplate
The goals sound like the usual boilerplate—-stringing good sounding words together without anything specific or concrete that can be measured.
They want to make the parents and taxpayers think they are doing something but all they may accomplish is make the parents feel good. How will these be judged at years end—in concrete terms ?