Dear Marysville School District families, students and staff,
Last fall we decided to engage in a process that we’re calling Dream Big 2.0, a follow up to the community engagement process we took on three years ago. We wanted to build on that work, check in with our larger community about our Strategic Directions, and also seek advice and feedback on an issue we’ve been wrestling with at the District – do we keep our current school choice model for high schools, or move to neighborhood boundaries?
Thank you for engaging with us in the process. We heard from students, parents, staff members and our community through a telephone poll, during confidential interviews, an online survey, small meetings and a large town hall meeting. The generous contribution of your time and energy is an important part of our success.
What did we learn?
For one, we need to do a better job communicating. That means really telling you what we’re doing and why. We not only need to share our successes, but be clear about how we achieved them.
We also learned that we need clear, focused strategic directions with measurable outcomes. We plan to refresh and refine our goals so we can report back to the community on how we’re doing.
You care deeply about your students, their academic success and their safety. Safety and security of our students emerged as a top concern and we will look at how we are continuing to provide measures and training to keep our students and staff safe.
As for the decision about high schools, we heard varied feedback on how to proceed. But overwhelmingly, we heard from our community that we need to make a decision, follow through, and communicate it clearly. We are still reviewing the data from our engagement efforts and plan to make a recommendation to the Board of Directors before the end of the school year.
You can access all the research and community engagement reports and resources here: www.bit.ly/MSDDreamBig. The resources include findings from the telephone poll, online surveys and community meetings. A comprehensive report of all the findings will be released in the coming weeks.
This has been a learning process for all of us and I look forward to taking what we’ve heard to work on solutions that benefit our students, schools and the larger community.
Sincerely,
Jason Thompson
Acting Superintendent
Marysville School District