Herricks Superintendent Tony Sinanis shared the district’s goals for the current school year during the Thursday Board of Education meeting.
This year’s goals are linked to last year’s and serve as building blocks for long-term goals in the district, Sinanis said.
The first goal Sinanis introduced related to creating the district’s first strategic plan. The superintendent said the goal is to identify opportunities for growth, develop a plan laying out how to improve upon them and develop a vision statement, among other things.
Sinanis said work on this has already begun and that the district is engaged with its Strategic Coherence Planning Committee on identifying the opportunities for growth.
The second goal, which was split between 2A and 2B, related to internal and external communications. Internal goals included maintaining the existing model of meetings, walks and talks or visits with different staff meetings along with beginning monthly meetings for a Superintendent Advisory Group. Goals for external communication include maintaining the increased communication the district has with the community, including more Herricks’ Happenings video updates and the monthly newsletter, the Herricks Herald, which began this fall.
As part of the strategic plan, Sinanis said the district will be further highlighting the Herricks Portrait of a Graduate, which lays out six competencies for students to master by the time they leave the district.
“We’re talking about wanting to see kids graduate with a strength in these competencies and we want them to know it exists,” Sinanis said. “That’s one of the things we will be working on to spotlight the Portrait of a Graduate.”
On instruction, Sinanis said reading intervention throughout the district will be a focus of a “micro” curriculum review as part of reviewing practices to become more aligned in the district.
For instructional leadership, Sinanis said the district will be focusing this year on professional learning emphasizing equity, adaptive leadership and feedback to support students and staff and working collaboratively to include the Portrait of a Graduate’s six competencies–collaboration, communication, confidence, compassion, creative innovation and critical thinking–into the district vision statement.
The district will also work closely with the assistant superintendent for human resources to continue recruiting, hiring and maintaining qualified and diverse candidates for all positions while systematizing and standardizing investigation processes and protocols in Herricks.
The superintendent said the district will look to identify future capital projects that can include flexible learning spaces that promote the Portrait of a Graduate’s six competencies while overseeing the renovations to the community center’s auditorium, which will be completed later this year.
Herricks’ last goal for the year includes budgeting and finance, which Sinanis said is to continue developing a fiscally responsible budget every year.
“That’s always going to be a focus because it’s an important part of what we do,” Sinanis said.
Board of Education President James Gounaris thanked Sinanis on behalf of the rest of the board for his hard work, saying there is a clear vision laid out for Herricks.
The next regular meeting for the Herricks Board of Education will be held on Wed., Dec. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Herricks Middle School cafeteria.
