The Revere Local School District, coordinating with the Impact Group, has held meetings for input from various groups on the Strategic Plan that the district will release in May.

The district, with superintendent Matthew Montgomery and other administrators, decided in the late fall of 2015 to update and improve its Strategic Plan, which states the issues most important to the school and its plans looking forward. The school contracted the Impact Group, a private consulting firm based in Hudson, to conduct meetings to gather input from various groups, including teachers, community members, students, and administrators. Montgomery specified how the plan will guide the district and listed the possible focal points of the plan.

“The Strategic Plan is comprehensive in that it will really encompass everything that we are about as a district and everything we stand for and where we want to take this district in the next three years. . .[The points could concern] safety and security of student. It could be around facilities and how we are evaluating our current facilities and hopefully improving them to meet the needs of our students. It could be around culture, how we are improving school climate and culture, how we are improving our curriculum to meet the needs of our students, [including that] to prepare them for the twenty-first century, [and teaching the] skills that they will need to be successful after they graduate from Revere High School,” Montgomery said.

The Executive Staff, made up of the superintendent, the central office staff, the building principals and the Impact Group, will report the indings they gathered from the stakeholder groups to develop a three year strategic plan for the district with reachable goals. Any documents they create will maintain a level of fluidity so that it may be revised in the future.

Montgomery continued to explain the process of gathering opinions and developing the plan.

“The strategic planning process in its entirety is very time consuming. It is necessary to visit as many stakeholder groups as possible… The stakeholder interviews from different groups started early January and [will finish] at the end of [March]. [We have conducted] three months of stakeholder interviews to get as many different voices as possible,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery values the student body’s perspective in addition to district staff.

“There were student focus groups as well, I hope that it is resonating with students that I am eager to have their voice at the table,” Montgomery said.

Social Studies teacher Jeff Fry, who attended the meetings for teachers’ input, explained the process of the Impact Group’s meetings and the exclusion of administrators from the meetings to allow the teachers to express their ideas more freely.

“The way that the questions were asked was more to get the staff to say what they believe in a non-threatening way so that the staff was not pressured in any way by administration. I think what [superintendent Matthew Montgomery] really wants is an honest approach and for people to feel like they can say what they want without influence from above,” Fry said.

Revere High School principal Phil King explained the range of the plan’s impact.

“‘What do you like about the district?’ ‘What are things that you hear about Revere High School or Middle School, or whatever school they are talking about?’ ‘What are things that are positive?’ ‘What are some things that you hear that might be negative?’ ‘Where would you like to see the district be in five years or ten years…?’ ‘What kinds of things are important to you that you want to have our students learn about…?’ . . . All those questions are going to get at the heart of what our Strategic Plan should be focused on,” King said.

If the process continues as planned, the Executive Staff will release the new Strategic Plan in May of 2016.