LISD looks ahead to long-term goals

By LPR Staff

Editor/POST-REGISTER

During a brief business meeting on Monday, the Lockhart ISD Board of Trustees turned their eyes toward the future, looking both at the educational and facility future for the District.

Dr. Pam Johnson, the Director of Secondary Curriculum and Instructional Technology presented a dr

aft of the LISD Strategic plan, based on input not only from recent board workshops, but also from the Superintendent’s cabinet.

“Our goal [in this draft] is to ensure district focus on effective teaching and learning,” she said.

Johnson also reported that the draft LISD Strategic Plan sets goals not only for the leadership of the District, but for the teachers in the classrooms, the district’s partners in the community, and for the students across the district.

She said the plan includes student mentoring and college and career preparation, but reminded the trustees the plan is an overview, and sets out objectives from 2014-2020.

“We nurture an upgrade attitude that reflects our spirit for continuous improvement,” she said. “We are grounded in the idea that the global world is ever changing.”

Johnson also said the instructional team also aims to keep the focus on every student, even as the student population continues to grow. She said in addition to instructional information, the District Strategic Plan includes ideas for growing the technology infrastructure, and working as a team to grow and improve each campus.

Dovetailing into Johnson’s presentation, the Trustees also heard a brief report from representatives of Owners’ Building Resource, the contracting firm that is acting project manager for the construction of the District’s new elementary school and the renovation of Lockhart ISD.

In addition to planning for asbestos remediation at Lockhart High School during the Christmas break, OBR has been holding “visioning sessions” with parents, students and staff members to discuss the needs and concerns involved with the location and construction of the new elementary school.

By state law, the District was also required to draft a targeted improvement plan for Navarro Elementary School, which missed their scoring requirements on last year’s STAAR testing by two points, and was named a “Low-Performing School.”

A portion of the issue at Navarro, according to Linda Bertram, Director of Curriculum and Special Instruction, is based on teacher turnover, and the number of teachers at Navarro who were new to the grade level last year.

In the next three months, Bertram said, teachers and administrators at Navarro will continue to participate in professional development, as well as to conference with Central Office to determine the best practices to identify the needs of the students. Additionally, the math curriculum at Navarro will be adjusted to reflect more closely with the testing areas on the STAAR tests, known as “TEKS.”

She said data will be monitored weekly to ensure that the plan is working for the students, and that Navarro’s test grades come up this year.

Though the LISD Board of Trustees routinely meets on the fourth Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the Conference Center at Lockhart High School, their regular meeting for the month of December will be on Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, to accommodate the holiday break. All Board meetings are open to the public, and can be viewed online at www.lockhartisd.org.