Trillium Lakelands District School Board director of education Wes Hahn introduced a new five-year strategic plan to trustees Jan. 25, saying it will help foster student development and achievement.
In the works since last spring, the plan outlines two goals Hahn said were designed to “create a future where students develop the competencies, understandings, selfconfidence, and resiliency to lead healthy, successful and fulfilling lives.”
The first goal surrounds supporting meaningful learning and success for students, while the second focuses on creating learning environments and experiences that foster equity, inclusion and belonging.
“We talked a lot about ensuring this plan is real, it’s authentic, it’s manageable, and, most importantly, narrowing down to areas that we can really focus on and not something that we just put on a shelf,” Hahn said. “We believe we’ve done that with this document.”
Vancouver-based Critical Thinking Consortium was brought in to assist. A key component was a public survey, which asked parents and guardians what they felt were the most important areas TLDSB should consider to support student achievement over the next five years. Nearly 5,000 people responded.
Covering 2022 to 2027, the strategy highlights four commitments.
“We will be adopting an ‘open to learning’ stance; monitoring our impact, which is critical; universalize and differentiate so that we can separate our community needs, or staff needs and our school needs and ensure there’s diversity across our system for how we plan; and unwavering commitment and focus on student achievement and well-being,” Hahn said. “Those are critical commandments that will guide how we go about our work with those particular goals.
“We are also going to commit to measuring and aligning our processes. The strategic plan acts as a guidance system, while our board improvement and equity plan serve as the measurement tool. That’s where we will, through the board plan, use our quantitative and qualitative data to measure our commitment in our process along our strategic plan. And it’s all aligned with our school improvement and equity plans. The better we are aligned, the more committed and focused we can be on achieving these goals.”
Trustee Judy Saunders said she liked the approach Hahn and his staff took in developing the new plan, saying it was easy to follow and outlined important, achievable targets. Vice-chair Stephen Binstock agreed, calling it “simple, but not simple- minded.”
Binstock told Hahn. “Now the hard work begins.”
