Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 1/11/2023
BELCHERTOWN – The Belchertown Director of Teaching and Learning Shawn Fortin announced that he and the Strategic Planning Committee has been meeting over the past few months to update its Strategic Plan for the schools.
At the Jan. 3 School Committee meeting, Fortin presented amendments to the Strategic Plan and Action Plan for the Belchertown schools.
“We thought of some potential updates to our strategic plan. Instead of scrapping everything and starting over again, we decided to add some important things,” Fortin added.
The original Strategic Plan was created in 2019 and is now extended until 2025.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused this Strategic Plan to be extended and updated according to Fortin and a new one will be drafted in a few years.
“The plan is to sunset this plan not in 2024, but now in 2025. By the 2025 school year we will have a plan of where we got with this current one and what our next five years will look like,” Fortin said.
Fortin said that he and Superintendent Brian Cameron took the recommendations of the Strategic Planning Committee and principals from each Belchertown school to draft a final version.
“The final Strategic Plan will be presented and hopefully accepted sometime this month,” Cameron added.
According to the Strategic Plan, by June 2025 the Belchertown school district will have annually assessed the climate of the district and schools by surveying parents, staff and students. The plan is to use these assessments to consistently report instances of positive engagement, communication and satisfaction with the school and district climate.
The plan will also focus on meeting the social, mental and academic needs of students, capital improvements and budgetary needs.
Fortin added that he is working on updating the Belchertown Public Schools Action Plan.
Fortin said, “In the past, you have seen a presentation at the beginning of the year for what we are working on, a presentation in the middle of the year for a progress update and a presentation at the end of the year to see what we completed. This document shows all of that.”
The goal of the Action Plan is to set benchmarks to monitor progress and impact during implementation by showing what has been accomplished and what is left, according to Fortin.
For example, one of the strategic initiatives is, “Embed proactive common language and positive expectations throughout the schools.”
When evaluating the progress, the district must find that 75 percent of classroom observations exhibit implementation of this initiative in order to meet the prescribed benchmark.
Other strategic initiatives include integrating trauma-informed approaches into the life and culture of the school, integrate tiered academic and behavioral intervention, support and enrichment strategies, establish a task force to investigate and design a template for student and success plan and develop value systems that are shared systemically among students, staff, parents and community members.
Fortin said, “This document shows that there are things we want to accomplish this year as well as shows things that are already in place or will be put in place next year or the year after.”
Cameron added that the strategic plan and action plan will officially be presented to the school committee in January in hopes that each amendment can be approved and implemented.