Five-year strategic plan given green light

BY CHRIS MAYS Brattleboro Reformer

WILMINGTON — Windham Southwest Supervisory Union is moving forward with a five-year strategic plan based on school community feedback.

“The plan was generated through a rich, facilitated process that looked at our strengths, opportunities and threats,” Superintendent Barbara Anne Komons-Montroll said in an interview.

The project started in December 2021 and a final presentation was delivered in June 2022. Implementation is underway, with community partnerships being actively sought.

Komons-Montroll, who is in her fifth year as superintendent, now feels like the supervisory union is on more solid footing.

“We’re clear on where we’re going and it’s a direction that has been directed by all of us, not just a small group,” she said. “But truly, it reflects what we believe, our values and what we believe our children need in order to achieve in a changing world.”

Strategic Plan for Student Success 2022-2027: Trailblazers in a Changing World includes clearly outlined goals and strategies to achieve them, Komons-Montroll said. The document can be found at wswsu49. org/strategic-plan.

The plan identifies four priority areas: social emotional learning, mental health and well-being; student engagement; academic achievement and success; and sustainability. Each area has multiple goals and very specific strategies to achieve desired outcomes, Komons-Montroll said.

For example, she pointed to a strategy for sustainability that involves establishing procedures and a process for conducting exit interviews. That’s already happening within the supervisory union, she said of the organization, which provides services to public schools in Halifax, Readsboro, Stamford, Whitingham and Wilmington, and students in Searsburg.

Another strategy in the same priority area is to establish a group focused on diversity, equity and inclusion to oversee implementation of the plan. Komons-Montroll said the Justice, Equity, Diversity and In- clusion (JEDI) Team had its second meeting last week “and that’s going to continue.”

Work on community engagement in ongoing. For instance, Twin Valley Middle High School hosted an open house last week in which students provided building tours to the community.

Komons-Montroll said she’s going on “road shows” to meet with different community groups, bringing along another administrator and a member of a school board, to discuss the plan and shared vision of the supervisory union. The hope is to get local groups engaged in the process so they can identify ways they can partner up to support the process.

School officials believe “it takes a community to really succeed in meeting such bold goals that we have,” Komons-Montroll said. School board members have provided suggestions for community groups to approach.

Altogether, Komons-Montroll counted about 50-plus stakeholders who have been involved in the project to date. She described it as “probably the broadest of any process we’ve done.”

Participants initially came up with a vision for skills they believe every child across the supervisory union should have, Komons-Montroll said. Six critical proficiencies were identified: adaptability, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, empathy and responsibility.

“We believe that with these skills,” Komons-Montroll said, “the students will succeed in a world that’s changing rapidly, in a world that’s not the same as with what we may have had grown up with.”

Inspiration also involved looking at previous improvement plans.

Having students join the process was “very rich,” Komons-Montroll, calling it “a thread throughout this plan” along with equity and inclusion. Students also are involved with the JEDI team.

Regarding future planning, Komons-Montroll said, “I’m sure our whole process and reflection and data gathering will inform that.”

“I’m excited by the potential of what we’re going to be able to do in partnership with our community in providing equitable access to education for all of our students,” she said.

Members of the Twin Valley Middle High School Youth Adult Partnership Program gather at the school’s library to look at some survey data from last year that they want to update. Student engagement is a focus of the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union’s new strategic plan.