NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Strategic planning is continuing for Buhler USD 313.
"Organizations do them every five years, and it's supposed to be a living document, so you want to update it every year, but you kind of refresh it and get lots of input every five years," Couchman said. "This was a time as our fifth year, and it's time to look at it, so we sent a survey out early on back in August, and we had over 1100 responses to that survey, which is phenomenal. We've taken that, we've met with a community planning group that's representative of all different factions, and it included parents, and teachers, and it included administration, and it included board members, and it included just community members, and we kind of really worked through that survey. We developed three focus areas, we took those three focus areas, we've given it to our administrative team to sort of come up with action plans, we are now taking that process to our staff and our faculty."
That process will happen before the holiday break.
"We're going to have a faculty meeting at every one of our buildings in the next two weeks," Couchman said. "It's going to be a very busy time, and we're going to put those three focus areas, which is student success, culture, and operations, and resources up, and with some action plans, and we're going to get feedback from our staff on what they want to keep, what they maybe would want us to consider changing, and then also anything that additional, and then we'll take that feedback, tweak it again, and they're also going to get to vote. We're going to give out like five coins, sort of like poker chips, if you want to them that way, and they're going to get each five of them, and they're going to get to put their five coins in any one of those focus areas that they feel like is a priority, so they could divide them up like two and three, or they could put all five of their chips into one focus area, which will help us process which one of those focus areas our staff really see as a priority, so we know where to spend most of our energy on right from the beginning."
After that, the plan will go back to the USD 313 Board of Education.
"They will also probably tweak it, and change a little bit, and they're actually the final approvers of this," Couchman said. "It is really you know a board of education, and our district's strategic plan, it's not my strategic plan, it's our administration, it's not our staff's, it's really our board, and our community's strategic plan, so we want to make sure we get as much input as possible."
A strategic plan is designed to be a document that lives outside of any individual or board's vision and shapes the vision for multiple iterations of both administration and board of education members.