A speedy effort to come up with a new strategic plan for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system races to a conclusion this week with town halls at Scotlandville and Liberty high schools ahead of a final Thursday vote.
A draft of the plan, on which work began in February, in advance of the town halls to be held Tuesday and Wednesday. The current 19-page draft is identical to the version shared at a May 21 session held at LSU with a select group of school employees and community members.
The first is Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Scotlandville High, 9870 Scotland Ave., and the second is Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at Liberty High, 1105 Lee Drive.
Leaders in Baton Rouge public schools on Friday debated a series of ambitious goals, including nearly doubling the number of second-graders wh…
A final draft of the plan, which would include this week’s community input as well as other recent input, is expected to be complete before at the Professional Development Center, 3000 North Sherwood Forest Drive.
“It is our hope that the strategic plan addresses the needs of the students, families and district moving forward, and we welcome additional feedback to ensure this accurately reflects our shared goals and values,†said Superintendent Sito Narcisse in a statement.
The latest draft lays out several ambitious goals, including nearly doubling the number of second-graders who read on grade level, a 75% increase in passage rates on Advanced Placement exams, a steep drop in the number of D-rated and F-rated schools, 25% decline in student suspensions, a 33% increase in job applications for open positions and reversing historic declines in overall enrollment.
The final document would replace a strategic plan that’s rarely been used since it was adopted in 2013. The new draft is the product of four months of work that began soon after Narcisse was hired in mid-January to lead the district’s second largest school district. His cabinet worked on the plan, while members of the School Board also participated during monthly retreats.
Salt Lake City-based Arbinger Institute has been serving as Narcisse’s hand-picked facilitator for the process. Their $138,000 initial fee is being paid for via undisclosed private donors who’ve given money to a private foundation that raises money for the school system. The institute is to continue work with the school district to update the plan over time.
The draft plan covers four general areas or “cornerstones†including student achievement, employee development, school operations and customer service. So far, across these four areas, there are 20 underlying commitments and 26 objectives. Progress in meeting the objectives will be tracked annually over the next three years, concluding with the 2024-25 school year.
Only 10 of the 26 objectives list baseline info from the just concluded 2020-21 school year to serve as a point of comparison. The document suggest that the 16 objectives without baseline data are blank because the data in question is “unreported or unidentified.â€
