Unprecedented student voice and involvement is shaping Kenora Catholic's 2020 - 2025 Strategic...
Students from the Kenora Catholic District School Board are having their say about what they need to be successful in school and in life, in the Board's next Strategic Plan. The 2020 - 2025 strategic plan is being shaped by unprecedented levels of student voice and involvement and Director, Derek Haime is pleased with the results.
"Of the 511 participants in the consultation process, 59 percent were made up of students. Over 1,270 ideas and thoughts were shared and over 46,800-star ratings were applied to the ideas during the Thougthexchange process. What this tells us is that our students know what they need to be successful. Many have been with our board for over 14 years. They discuss it at the dinner table, at the soccer fields at the hockey arenas with their parents and friends. They are living it right now. Having the 59 percent of respondents be our students has been so important and instructive to us. Our students are shaping our next Strategic Plan."
Dr. Haime recently met with the Grade 11/12 Business Leadership Class at St. Thomas Aquinas High School to talk about the 2020 - 2025 Strategic Plan. Haime commissioned the class to conduct a research project to analyze all 29 Ontario Catholic School Board's strategic plan goals, identifying trends and invited the students to make recommendations on their findings.
Avery Kasprick, Grade 12 student, talks about the assignment. "This project has had a really big impact on our class. We were all very excited to help build the strategic plan for 2020 - 2025, because our class is a Business Leadership Class and we all have the same kinds of goals and interests. When we had the chance to help Dr. Haime develop the next strategic plan we were excited about it."
Every student in the class had a Catholic school board assigned to them. They had to find and analyze the goals and values of other Catholic school board's strategic plans and present their findings and recommendations to Dr. Haime.
"Our recommendation to Dr. Haime for the Strategic Plan is to compile a couple of very strong and clear goals and hopefully they will be clear to everyone. This is especially important for our younger students, and having a smaller plan with fewer goals is beneficial so everyone know the goals of the Board."
"I was very pleased that the recommendation from the students was to stick with no more than three goals," said Derek Haime. "The Business Leadership Class attested that many other boards have 4 - 5 goals that they have been focusing on. In reviewing the business literature and research, the strong recommendation is 'no' stick to no more than three goals."
Kenora Catholic will continue to refine and synthesize the Thoughtexchange consultation data throughout the summer and will present a final Strategic Plan to the Board of Trustees at the October 15th Board Meeting. The new plan will be implemented in late 2019.