Strategic Plan
2021-2024 Strategic Plan
Contact
Michelle Caldwell
Director of Assessment & Accountability
michelle.caldwell@wcsga.net
(706) 217-6732
Kristina Horsley
Director of Communications
kristina.horsley@wcsga.net
(706) 217-6724
2021-2024 STRATEGIC PLAN
The strategic planning process began with a community survey released in September 2019. The feedback was tremendous! The survey responses of more than 1,000 families, educators and community members helped our strategic planning committee prioritize the district's greatest challenges, specify what students need to learn to be successful, and define the evidence that will evaluate the quality of education in Whitfield County Schools.
An editorial in the Dalton Daily Citizen called the survey "…a great opportunity offered by the school board for you to tell its members and other school officials the direction the school system needs to go and how it should get there."
2021-2024 Strategic Plan Documents
Strategic Plan Progress Reports
Georgia Vision Project
Georgia Vision Project
The Georgia Vision Project provides Local District Recommendations as guidelines to help districts provide equity and excellence in education. Twenty of the Vision Project's district recommendations are included in the Whitfield County Schools Three-Year Strategic Plan. Below are examples of that alignment of ideas.
- Continuous Improvement
- Communication
- Early Learning & Student Success
- Teaching & Learning
- Teaching & Learning Resources
- Human & Organizational Capital
- Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy
- Financial Resources
Continuous Improvement
Communication
Early Learning & Student Success
- GPVE 3.1 — Identify high leverage public and private human service organizations to help create and strengthen local, regional and state-wide partnerships between early learning providers and K-12 systems.
- GPVE 3.2 — Create public-private partnerships for the purpose of supporting early childhood initiatives that address healthy child/family development and economic benefits to the community.
- GPVE 3.4 — Provide opportunities for all children from birth to five years old to participate in high quality learning experiences that are designed to promote all aspects of a child's development, whether provided by families in the home or through a licensed public or private program.
- GPVE 3.5 — Align developmental and academic standards for all children ages birth through 8 years old to provide a continuity of learning experiences and personal growth.
Teaching & Learning
- GVPE 4.1 — Ensure that teachers collaborate in professional learning communities, share effective teaching practices, and are provided support for their ongoing learning in order to provide an environment where students learn best.
- GVPE 4.2 — In order to provide an environment where students learn best, ensure that teachers can access, understand and effectively use technologies to teach and measure what students know and can do.
- GVPE 4.3 — In order to provide an environment where students learn best, ensure that teachers teach challenging and problem-solving lessons that are flexible enough to meet the interests and needs of individual students.
- GVPE 4.4 — In order to provide an environment where students learn best, ensure that teachers use varied measures to determine what students know and can do.
Teaching & Learning Resources
Human & Organizational Capital
- GVPE 6.3 — Collaborate with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, the Georgia Department of Education and other credentialing agencies to provide comprehensive strategies to find, grow and keep the most effective educators.
- GVPE 6.4 — Organize personnel, distribute leadership and implement processes that maximize student learning.
Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy
- GVPE 8.1 — Develop safe, orderly, supportive learning environments built on respect and encouragement where all individuals believe they can make a positive difference.
- GVPE 8.2 — Make each school and school system an inviting, safe, engaging and accessible place to be for students, parents, staff and the larger community.
- GVPE 8.4 — Continuously determine all stakeholder perceptions of schools and school districts.
- GVPE 8.6 — Develop school and district cultures that are sensitive and responsive to the cultural, racial, ethnic and socio-economic make-up of the communities they serve.
- GVPE 8.7 — Get to know and be willing to actively listen to the students in our schools through the development of systems to foster regular feedback.
Financial Resources
- GVPE 9.2 — Initiate an ongoing process at the local district level for systematically evaluating all expenditures to enable the development and adoption of budgets that are focused on the overall wellbeing of students and on district strategies for maximizing student learning.
- GVPE 9.3 — Provide a high level of flexibility to local school districts in decision-making authority about the most effective strategies for the expenditure of funds to enable all students to be successful in school, coupled with appropriate methods for evaluating school and district success and for implementing positive state interventions where they are found to be needed.