This April marks the new strategic planning for school years 2025-2030 alongside updates to the Gorilla Vision for 2035. The Solomon district collaborates with staff, community members and key stakeholders to implement the best practices to help schools improve student outcomes, comply with regulations, remain agile during change and ensure student needs are met. The Solomon school mission is anchored in the belief that education is the cornerstone of tomorrow’s leadership. This embraces the motto, ‘Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow’. We are devoted to fostering an environment where students thrive. Our commitment extends beyond academics; it embraces the holistic development of young individuals. We are dedicated to sculpting a ‘Portrait of a Graduate’ who is not only academically prepared but also equipped with life skills and career readiness.
Justin Coup outlines a comprehensive process for this strategic plan, emphasizing its significance: “This will be the third strategic plan, with several participants returning from the first two. We’ve seen between 42 and 65 people come out to engage with the topics featuring both large and small group sessions, followed by feedback loops to gather diverse perspectives. An independent facilitator will compile this feedback, presenting the key takeaways to the Board of Education, which will then establish timelines, define completion criteria, and assign responsibilities for each action by the start of the 2025-26 school year.”
Our current focus areas are (1) well-being, (2) college or (3) career bound students, (4) parent and community involvement, (5) learning enhancement and (6) facility improvements.
The first focus area, Well-Being, strives to ensure the social-emotional well being of all students. SEL Counselor, Tina Jacquart, remarks on her impact to the students. “The positive impact my position here has had on the students and our community is the relationship building. These students who are going through some of the hardest transitions in [their] life as they are trying to figure out friends and family life and do well in school and are expected to be athletic, I serve as someone to cheer them on.”
The second and third focus areas have been adapted to each student’s future plan after graduation. Whether their plan be college bound or career bound, College & Career Counselor, Jodi Howard, engages the students in discussion of their future daily. She facilitates lessons and activities that prepare students for an interview, a college visit, an internship, and much more. She plans Opportunity Night, which is an excellent chance for students to engage with local businesses, schools, and school related clubs or internships.
In response to the focus area, Involvement, Kelly Vandecreek, Elementary SPED teacher and Solomon Gorilla Foundation president testified that, “when we provide [the community with] opportunities to be involved, they have really shown up.” She has seen benefits in hosting community events at the school in line with a student event, like the spring concert and Pizza Bingo.
Each year brings new learning challenges that the administration and teachers must adapt to. Thus, the focus area, Enhancement, is especially important to engage the students in an impactful way. Kjell Nordgren, who has taught at Solomon for twelve years and Kelly Glanville, currently finishing her second year at Solomon, reflected on how they have seen enhancement in the classrooms. Nordgren recognizes that every year bears new challenges, but with the efforts to engage the students, learning truly does become the focus. “You get kids to buy in to what they’re learning and why and it goes a long way towards helping them to learn.”
Students are benefitting from a wide range of opportunities to get involved in their career choice now, whether they are college bound or career bound, now, rather than waiting until they cross the stage. Glanville is proud of the variety of professional development opportunities and more so of the support it receives. “The teachers are fully united as a team; we’re all on one page. There’s a lot more consistency within because everybody has their co-teaching partner in alignment across all school years. We keep each other accountable and consistent”, affirms Glanville.
The final focus area, Construct, centers around the updates and changes happening to the school facilities. According to Guy Arnold, iServe Facilities Director, “the impact has been tremendous and altered the direction of the school. Now the [high school commons] is an educational area which used to be completely unused. We utilize space for [early learning center] that we didn’t use before. Playgrounds have been changed around so each area is used by just that age range. The movement of the building has kept big kids and little kids separated.”
As we look toward the next several years, we are eager for the open discussion of Solomon student success at this year’s strategic plan. Coup “hopes to bring in our next generation of community, families and parents into the discussion and really focus on our PRE K through 12. What [do the families] want school to look like by the time their kids walk across the stage.” Strategic planning is key to seeing the school move forward in a way that reflects how the world is changing. “The strategic plans have been extremely successful and I think they have truly guided our board’s discussion and our board’s decision-making on a monthly basis,” affirms Coup.
Please be sure to mark your calendars for Apr 9, 2025. We look forward to engaging with your opinions and feedback for the next generation of gorillas.