Among the districtwide goals for 2017-18, City Schools Superintendent Chris Dailey told the board at last night's meeting, the district will strive to communicate better and engage more with the Batavia community, improve student writing, improve the use of technology and maintain a solid budgeting process.
Goal #1 he said is communication and engagement with the community, which will include recognition of outstanding alumni, more use of social media, increased use of volunteers and promotion of academic, athletic, art and music achievements.
"We have kids and staff who are doing amazing things all the time," Dailey said. "We need to do a better job celebrating it in our community so they know what’s going on in all aspects of our school."
Improving student written communication is the second goal, Dailey said. At every grade level, the district needs to put more focus on helping students become better writers.
“We’ve had college professors share with us that our kids need to learn to write better," Dailey said. "We take that very seriously. As a group, this year we’ve committed to common benchmarks across the district in each grade where our kids will do written responses and work on improving their ability in writing.”
Over the past couple of years, students and teachers have been given Chromebooks, each with access to a group of Google tools known as Gsuite. The district has provided more training and will continue to provide training to teachers, on the use of Gsuite in classrooms. As a third goal, this will continue to be a priority he said because it helps bring STEAM into each district building. (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, (and) Mathematics.)
"That’s where the jobs are coming in our region," Dailey said. "(The students) need to know what’s out there."
The district has a solid budgeting process, Dailey said. Its budget ambassador program is even being copied by other school districts around the state now as a way of getting the community involved in the budget process.
As a fourth goal, Dailey wants to improve this process. Last year, he spoke before eight community groups about the budget. His goal this year is to double that number.
The district will continue to work to keep the tax levy below the tax cap level, which helps ensure residents are eligible for state rebates. The district will also look for other sources of revenue.
"Our goal is to pass (the budget) with a super majority of 60 percent or higher to show the community does support what we’re doing financially to advocate for their students," Dailey said.
As a stretch goal, what Dailey calls the "Columbus Day Goal," is to have 100 percent of the teachers set up with their own Web pages on the district site that they are updating regularly. This is a great resource for parents, he said.
