District’s INSPIRE strategic plan aims to improve educational outcomes through support and opportunities

Strategic focus areas defined by the district and community members outline steps for creating successful, well-rounded and healthy students.

A new vision for how the two schools in the district will deliver education over the next decade is coming into fruition this year thanks to a combined effort of dozens of teachers, students, parents, community members and administrators.

The district’s Strategic Planning Initiative (SPI), which began last spring and was accepted by the board in October, aims to “improve education outcomes” for students. On Oct. 17, the Board of Trustees adopted the 2022-2023 Strategic Plan, titled WE Inspire! To ensure students fulfill graduate profiles and goals for community growth, WE Inspire! outlines strategic focus areas for district-wide growth.

“This plan is the roadmap for our district,” superintendent Bill W. Sanderson said.

Goals outlined at the beginning of SPI meetings include creating graduate profiles, or outlines of what a successful student leaving Saratoga and Los Gatos High might look like. This included individual steps like “igniting student’s passions for learning and empowering them to achieve brilliance,” “transforming our classroom and school expectations, relationships and practices to more fully align with [the district’s] values” and “nurturing caring communities that develop student’s full identities,” with an emphasis on balancing linguistic, cultural and academic excellence with social emotional health.

When creating these graduate profiles, the SPI defined student success using traits like “preparation to succeed in the global world,” “ethical and responsible leaders,” “creative and critical thinkers,” “global communicators and collaborators” and “thriving and healthy people: mind, body and character.”

The goal of the strategic plan was to allow students to more effectively reach these goals. Steps toward achieving these goals have resulted in “strategic focus areas,” which include action items the plan hopes to help achieve, such as “student voice, engagement, success and well-being,” “professional practice, learning and innovation,” “culture, leadership and accountability” and “strategic family alliances and leadership.”

The SPI team has collaborated to outline which concrete steps could be taken to achieve these outlined goals.

Some concrete steps that the Strategic Plan details include a commitment to “build and support a global leadership team who value and practice equity and inclusion” as well as “implementing a robust and coherent professional development program for teachers, support staff, and administrators.”

“So much of education, our community, and the world has changed since the district last met with our community and had created the components of a strategic plan several years ago,” Sanderson said in a press release. “I’m thrilled with the priorities our Strategic Plan Design Team came up with and look forward to beginning the next stages of implementation.”