WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — A new strategic plan will be put in place for the Wausau School District.
On Monday night at the Board of Education meeting for the Wausau School District, the board unanimously approved the proposed strategic plan. The strategic plan was brought forward by Superintendent Dr. Keith Hilts, who joined the school district back in March of 2018.
Dr. Hilts has had experience with strategic plans for school districts in the past. He implemented a strategic plan at his last job as the Superintendent for the Ashland School District.
Dr. Hilts says of his experience with strategic plans, “There’s an improvement in staff understanding of the direction of the district. A better ability to focus our resources on the strategic issues. And then, of course, we made progress in those areas.”
The strategic plan focuses on five different goal areas for the district. The goal areas were decided based on data review and the listening sessions from the community and schools. The five areas are wellness, people, optimization of resources, service, and academic achievement.
Dr. Hits describes the five goal areas as, “Wellness, which is going to evolve from the strategic plan team. Staff relations, we call it the people strand. Resource optimization, trying to make sure that the resources we have are used to their best impact. Service, there was a lot of conversation about how do we better interact with parents. How do we be of better service internally? And academic achievement of course. Which is the heart of our work so that’s clearly got to be a strand of our strategic plan.”
The strategic plan was on the agenda for the school board meeting was for the board to pass the five goal areas and the planning process. The plan was approved unanimously by the seven board members in attendance.
Dr. Hilts said he’s excited about the strategic plan and to include community members to share their expertise.
The plan now goes to two planning retreats on January 21st and February 18th to completely define the goal areas. It will then be presented to school staff for more revisions. And the final approval for the plan by the board of education will be in March.
