District Input Sought Prior To Renewing School’s Five Year Strategic Plan

     The Turtle Lake School Administration is asking District residents and staff for input in regards to the renewing of the District’s five-year strategic plan.
“In the last year, we have learned how important school is to our students and our community,” Superintendent Kent Kindschy said is a survey sent out to District residents recently. “I am very happy that we have been able to be in school for the first semester and help our community continue with some sort of normalcy. We have excellent staff, students and parents that are all working toward the goal of educating our students.”
     “In addition to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are also working to renew our five-year strategic plan. A strategic plan is a process of setting goals and deciding on actions to achieve those goals. A strategic plan describes how goals will be achieved through the use of available resources. We want to hear from all of our staff, parents and community members to develop of plan where we can continue to grow the Turtle Lake School District.”
     There are a couple of ways to respond to the survey. Residents can fill out the survey sent through the mail or they can go online on their computer and fill it out. The survey can be found at www.surveymonkey. com/r/TurtleLakeSchool.
     The survey consists of eight questions and asked residents to select their high priorities from a list provided to the questions. Questions include:
What are the greatest challenges the Turtle Lake School District has to address over the next five years to provide a quality education for all students?
What are the most important skills and abilities students need to know or be able to do to be prepared for a successful future?
What evidence do you use to evaluate the quality of education in the Turtle Lake School District?
What should the financial priorities be for the Turtle Lake School District during the next five years?
What is your preferred method of communication?
What information or advice would you give the strategic planning team as they make decisions about the long term priorities and goals?
What would make the Turtle Lake School District even better?
     Superintendent Kindschy explained the first strategic plan was done his first year as Superintendent where he worked with the School Board and principals to complete it so they had goals to work towards. That original plan was performed inhouse. The residents were not surveyed. Prior to Superintendent Kindschy no strategic plan had been put together.
     “I have reviewed this with the school board each year and will continue to do so annually,” Superintendent Kindschy said. “The principals and I review it twice a year.”
     While this is not a State requirement it is similar to a municipality’s Comprehensive Plan.
     A strategic planning team consisting of Superintendent Kindschy and Prinicpals Wagner and Hinze will review the responses to put together the plan.
“If covid was not happening, there would be a focus group from the community and the school to work with the planning,” Superintendent Kindschy said. “The plan allows us to use what is important to stakeholders and set goals for growth and improvement in those areas. We will use the district resources available to complete our plan,” he added.
     The survey will only take a few minutes to complete. While completing the online survery is preferred, if you wish to complete the paper survey return it to Turtle Lake School District, 205 Oak Street N., Turtle Lake, WI 54889. Deadline to complete the survey is February 14, 2021.