Newton Public Schools (NPS) Hosts Student Focus Group In Hopes to Form Long-Range District Plan 

This week students, parents, and staff received a Strategic Planning Survey from the district designed to collect data to form a new “strategic plan,”  providing information about district changes to families.The Strategic Planning Committee included select students that attended a Student Focus Group WIN block, Wednesday, Dec. 11. 

According to Superintendent Anna Nolin, most school districts have a long-range plan that informs educators and families about the plans and changes in the school system for a three to five-year period.

“Newton public schools has mostly had one-year goals each year for a long time, and that makes it hard to do any deep work and long-range planning so that the district can financially plan for it and so that teachers can get the kind of training that they need,” said Nolin.

This year, NPS is working with a third-party organization, the Teaching Learning Alliance (TLA), to help encourage conversations within the Newton community.

“I wanted to avoid the community feeling like I had some sort of agenda on things that got into the strategic plan when in fact, we will use a community coalition to do it and outside consultants to facilitate that conversation,” said Nolin.

According to the associate director of TLA Edward Lee, the program facilitates writing the plan for Newton and makes sure everyone is represented as part of this process.

The strategic plan is created using a three-step process. First, data is collected from the community. Then, an internal group crafts the strategic plan with the data. Finally, the new strategic plan is implemented, according to Lee.

Currently, the school committee is in the first phase of collecting data.

“Our goal is to represent the person that may not be at the table. Their perspective still has to be communicated as part of this plan, and that’s why we go through all this collection component in phase one,” said Lee. 

During the WIN block, students were asked to share the strengths, challenges, and opportunities at North. A similar discussion took place at South. The feedback shared by students is information that will be taken into consideration when making the strategic plan.

“I think it’s really smart for the school to implement such a plan, as we have such a big and diverse school. The student focus group WIN was well structured in how we got to talk about good things about North as well as things that could be improved, and I really enjoyed being a part of it,” said senior Jonathan Santos.

 “It’s a step in a good direction into making sure everyone feels seen at our school and has the same opportunities,” Santos added