With their presentation to the Board of Education on Thursday, March 6, the Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP) planning committee is finalizing the 2014-2019 Rockwood plan at their last meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 18, in order to set the district’s goals and look towards the future.
Because of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Dr. Katie Reboulet, executive director of Student Services, said Rockwood must create a plan every five years to meet up with the state’s standards and this creates the district’s long range goals.
Dr. Reboulet said she oversees the CSIP process by planning all the meetings, gathering the information and compiling the final CSIP plan.
“It’s a strategic planning process for the district that sets goals for the overall programs and services in Rockwood,” Dr. Reboulet said.
Dr. Reboulet said they are going to have five major goals: an academic, a school climate, a highly qualified staff, a fiscal responsibility and a school governance goal.
At the first meeting on Oct. 23, Dr. Reboulet said the committee did a SWOT analysis, or looked at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. At the second meeting on Nov. 20, they worked on finalizing goals and CSIP objectives. At the final meeting, they will create the draft CSIP plan that will be taken to the community for feedback.
“We have great students and great staff working hard to make sure our students are prepared for the future,” Dr. Reboulet said. “Because of the kids we have coming to our school district and the teachers and staff we have, I think we have a great future in Rockwood.”
Sophomore Renee Owens, CSIP planning committee member, said the administration team nominated her to participate in the group’s three meetings in order to provide student input.
“They [Rockwood] wants to be more involved with the community,” Owens said. “I provide the student voice.”
Owens she worked with the finance group who has been working on forming ideas and goals at the past two meetings. Working alongside Owens, Tim Rooney, chief financial and legislative officer, is the goal champion, or leader, of the finance group.
“It is a good practice to do strategic planning so that you create a vision for the future,” Rooney said. “You engage the community in setting goals and objectives for the district, and once you have those set that becomes your road map for how you conduct your business over the course of five years. It helps set the direction of the district.”
At the final meeting, Rooney said he will help finalize the district’s financial goals and how they can be implemented.
At the end of this five year plan, in 2019, Rooney said he hopes the district replaces capital funding and that the district is on a long term plan to make changes to the schools facilities, for example school parking lots. If the district waits to long to make these improvements, Rooney said it may get too costly.
“In my opinion, we need to come up with a more sustainable model of capital financing going forward, which will actually be much cheaper for us as well,” Rooney said. “We need to continue to use our resources wisely so that we can focus our minds on areas that are producing the best results.”