What Do You Think of the Cabrillo Unified School District Strategic Plan?

Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD) superintendent Tony Roehrick would like the Coastside community to know that a draft report of the school district's strategic plan is ready for review.

“We are encouraging our community to review the document and to provide any feedback they may have,” he said. “A survey monkey link will be added to our web site as well for this purpose.”

Review the CUSD Strategic Plan here. The District will be collecting feedback through Monday, Dec. 12.  

At that point, a Steering Committee will begin the work of developing the strategic plan, which under the leadership of Roehrick, is intended to incorporate the “big” dreams of the many districts’ constituents with the practical realities of operating in survival mode under financial constraints.

The Strategic Plan was prepared by Public Consulting Group Education and strives to develop a five-year plan for the school district. PCG Education consultants facilitated data collection, an examination of current practices, conditions for success, and expectations for the future.     

Data collection in the community began in late September 2013 with an online survey. In addition to focus groups, community forums, and individual interviews, more than 600 surveys were submitted from students, teachers, parents, community members, and school administrators (610 surveys from individuals who identified themselves as Caucasian and 25 Spanish-language surveys).          

In the report it states, “Staff, students, and the community at-large participated in an inclusive process, in which they discussed the current state of education in CUSD and shared their ideas for what constitutes successful outcomes for students and the community."

Still, Public Consulting Group Director of Strategic Planning Steve Kutno told school board members last week at a meeting that his firm "failed to adequately reach the Spanish-speaking community," according to a report in the Half Moon Bay Review.

Despite the lack of response from the Hispanic community, which makes up the largest population in Cabrillo at 49.9 percent of all students, the district plans to move forward with the data its consultant was able to collect, according to the Review article.

Even though there wasn’t a large number of surveys from the Hispanic community, emerging themes and key issues would not be drastically altered with more data from primarily Spanish-speaking residents, said the Director of Strategic Planning in the Review article, and that the struggles with collecting input from the Hispanic community show that communication with Spanish-speaking individuals in the district needs to be improved.

Better communication with the Spanish-speaking community emerged as one of the nine themes that the District should consider focusing on in its strategic plan: “Expand and emphasize the quality of two-way communications across CUSD. Empower the community to participate by providing more timely and relevant communication. Enhance the quality of communications with Spanish speaking community."

Other themes that were prevalent and consistently represented across the data include:                 

• Addressing Academic Achievement and Results                 

• Character Education                 

• Community Engagement                 

• Organizational Leadership                 

• Professionalism                 

• Resources

• Safe Environment                 

• Technology                 

Review the CUSD Strategic Plan here.

Read "Cabrillo Survey Data Lacks Hispanic Input" in the Half Moon Bay Review here.

Were you part of the CUSD strategic plan data collection process? What do you think of the draft report?