Here’s how to save time while still meeting State and Federal qualifications.
We all want to see district and school improvement — and the continuous improvement plan plays a key role in setting goals, defining strategies, and guiding action throughout the year. But as you’re writing district and school plans, is it necessary to create a separate goal or strategy to address every district policy? Or, should you focus on the goals that are most important to your school or district instead? In this blog, we’ll pose opportunities to meet state and federal requirements for addressing district policies in your improvement plan, while remaining focused on your top priorities.
Focus on What Matters Most:
Create a Plan Based on Your Needs Assessment.
Conducting a comprehensive needs assessment (CNA) is not only best practice, it is required under ESSA. Did you know that ESSA refers to identifying needs 323 times! Needs will vary for every district and every school, but examples could include raising standardized test scores in Math for elementary students, reducing bullying incidences in middle schools, or increasing graduation rates for high schools. Your improvement plan should be based on the unique needs identified in your CNA — and to be most effective, it should include a limited number of key objectives, which you could reasonably accomplish in a year.
Comply with State and Federal Requirements:
Addressing District Policies in Your Improvement Plan
Most states require districts to create policies addressing specific issues that are important to schools and students throughout the state, such as bullying, harassment or suicide prevention. Depending on your state, there may be dozens of required policies for your district. Some of the most common required district policies include:
- Bullying Prevention Policy
- Child Abuse and Neglect Policy
- Dropout Prevention Policy
- Planning and Decision-Making Policy
- Discipline Management Policy
- Sexual Harassment Policies
- Dating Violence Policies
- Trauma-Informed Care Policy
- Mental Health Promotion and Intervention Policy
- Substance Abuse Prevention Policy
- Suicide Prevention Policy
While each of these policies is important, they may not all be relevant to your district and school improvement plans for the current academic year. For example, your district may already have an effective bullying policy in place, and your data may show that instances of bullying have decreased over the past several years. If this is the case, bullying may not be a top priority for improvement. Meanwhile, substance abuse instances may have increased in recent years, indicating that developing strategies for substance abuse prevention should be a high priority.
Do I have to write a strategy for every district policy?
If your state mandates addressing all district policies in your continuous improvement plan, you may be wondering, “Do I have to write a strategy for every district policy?”
Fortunately, the answer is, “No.” If you write a strategy for every district policy, regardless of whether or not that area is in need of improvement, the development of your plans will take much longer, and your plan may become bloated with more goals than you can reasonably accomplish in a year, making it feel unattainable.
Save Time by Adding District Polices as Links or Addendums.
To address policy requirements in improvement plans, districts can choose to add their existing policies to improvement plans as addendums. This can be a great solution when the topic of the policy does not relate to a problem identified during the comprehensive needs assessment process. Since most districts already have well-written policies in place, it may only take a few moments to locate and attach the relevant policy as an addendum. You can also include a hyperlink to district policies on your website.
In cases where a policy is related to a high-priority need identified in the CNA, districts should develop a strategy to address that need. However, even in these cases, there is no need to include the full text of an existing policy in your plan. Instead, it is acceptable to reference the policy as an addendum and include a hyperlink.
Simplify your district continuous improvement process with Plan4Learning!
If you would like to learn more about our improvement planning software for schools and districts, please give us a call at 877.331.6160 today or email us at sales@806technologies.com.
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