HPS trustees and administrators discuss future of district

After participating in their regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday evening, the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees engaged in a long-term strategic planning meeting, where they discussed their goals for the future of the district.

Montana School Boards Association General Counsel Debra Silk led the meeting, the first in a series, where trustees and school administrators looked at aspects of their strategic plan from 2016 and discuss revisions and improvements.

Silk said strategic plans typically need to have 10- to 15-year goals in mind, which may seem like a bit much, but is vital to the health of a district.

She said schools without these long-term strategic plans tend to progress and adapt more slowly, as they think about only the next three to five years, reacting to things that happen and not actively building the school up proactively.

She said this is the perfect time for districts to be reevaluating their plans, as the pandemic has taught districts much about what they are capable of through technology.

Silk said parents want the best for their children and public schools need to show them that they are worth these potential students’ — and their parents’ — time.

She split the crowd into groups with an even mix of administrators and trustees to individually discuss the schools’ core purpose, values and ideology, expecting more or less an affirmation of what the school already stands for.

Members of the group largely did so, but when it came to values like diversity and opportunity thought it would be prudent to have what they mean explained more explicitly in the plan, as such concepts can be interoperated fairly broadly.

They also discussed one of the schools’ slogans, “Make a living, make a life, make a difference,” what that means for each individual student and how to work toward that, whether that means college, the military or a job after graduation.

After that they groups split up again to talk about big-picture visions for the district in the next decade.

Silk said thinking in those terms can be a bit difficult to wrap one’s mind around, so, to better conceptualize this timeframe, she asked them to think about a student in kindergarten and what they would want for that student by the time they graduated.

“I want you to think about what it is you want for this district and the students that you’re serving and the community that you’re serving in 10 to 15 years,” she said.

After the groups discussed this individually they came back together and a few common themes were present, mainly how to satisfy the needs of each individual student and giving them more options for how to guide their education.

Trustees and administrators talked about the possibility of moving to a charter school model or even becoming something closer to an public academy by offering more than traditional education.

They talked about the possibility of offering more than one type of diploma, integrating the concept of the portfolio into graduation, re-examining graduation requirements generally and offering new ways to learn while retaining the core of what makes their programs good already.

They also briefly talked about current goals that aren’t being met, like increasing engagement of local stakeholders, which Superintendent Craig Mueller said he thinks is an area where they need significant improvement.

Silk said subsequent meetings will focus on shorter-term goals, as well as taking into account potential changes in the environment the school operates in.

These considerations include five major factors that include technology and science; legislation and regulation; politics and social values; economic climate, and demographics.

After the meeting, the board also discussed the possibility of using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to address a number of issues at school buildings regarding air flow and ventilation.

Amid the pandemic, airflow has become an increasingly well-known area of concern in schools around the U.S., and Havre Public Schools recently had the engineering company Ameresco do an energy audit of the school and provide a number of recommend projects to Mueller.

He said Ameresco provides this information with the knowledge that the board may choose another company to do it, and, as far as he can tell, it is feasible to do every project with the funds they can access.

He also said they could use part of those funds for other things and use a loan to pay for the rest, one that allows use of energy cost savings gained by the projects themselves.

Regardless of how the board chooses to do it, he said, all of these improvements would be welcomed by maintenance staff and would be a massive benefit to the school as a whole.

He said decisions on this matter won’t have to be made until board meetings next month.