Eastpointe school board approves strategic plan

EASTPOINTE — In the spring of 2022, a group of staff members, parents, community members, clergy and Eastpointe High School students came together to form a committee to work on a strategic plan for the Eastpointe Community Schools district.

The group met several times to discuss district matters and come up with the plan to benefit students and staff. Now, nearly one year later, the plan will be put into action.

At the Jan. 9 Eastpointe Community Schools Board of Education meeting, the school board voted 7-0 to adopt the strategic plan.

President Jon Gruenberg and Vice President Chineva Early were the two school board representatives on the strategic plan committee.

The strategic plan is available on the district’s website at eastpointeschools.org. The plan includes the district’s mission, vision and motto, along with goals and strategies.

“Once the board adopts the strategic planning document with our preferred future statements, the administrative team will begin working on living into the plan,” Superintendent Christina Gibson said. “We will take the goals and objectives and start to define which systems, which committees, which people will engage in those.”

The strategic plan focuses on student growth and achievement, learning environments and support, a working environment and high-quality staff, family and community partnerships, and resources for finances, facilities and technology.

The plan also includes core values and a portrait of a graduate, adult and system. The graduate portrait, for example, includes the knowledge, skills, character and mindset needed to thrive in life.

The core values are designed to guide actions and behaviors and include safety and well-being; healthy and trusting relationships; diversity, equity, inclusion and cultural competence; and connected families and collaborative community.

“We don’t have answers to all of the strategic plan,” Gibson said. “We have defined the ‘what’ of what we want to do; the ‘how’ will come next.”

“This is kind of like the road map telling us the direction that we’re going to go in, the particular stops that we make along the way and the things we do along the way is yet to come,” Gruenberg said.

A dashboard will allow the district to continue to review the strategic plan.

“We will be able to see firsthand what we are achieving, when we are achieving and things like that. We are going to have measuring sticks in place, and we’ll be able to look at the gauges and see how we are doing,” Gruenberg said.

Each strategic plan meeting held over the past year allowed for committee members to meet with different people.

“We had multiple tables around. We all interacted, and we switched the tables each time we met so you were always interacting and engaging with other people. The students’ input was really eye-opening, and the staff as well, too,” Gruenberg said. “It was like engaging with them on a different level because we’re going over something that’s going to impact the whole district. We did not sugarcoat anything. We actually looked at some of the very hard truths and the challenges we face as a district. That’s what this plan was built upon.”

Early agreed.

“You got a chance to see it from their lens. We got a chance to see it from the staff level and the students,” Early said. “Our tables were really engaged in this process. It wasn’t like one person dominated or one person’s word was it. We all had time to (give) input each time we changed our table.”

Gibson also commented on the pandemic regarding the strategic plan.

“Strategic planning in the past was before a pandemic. We have had some of the most disruptive and innovative opportunities in public education. The board doing a strategic plan now demonstrates an adaptability and flexibility to the educational environment,” Gibson said.

“I think we would be remiss as an institution not to take what we’d learned during the pandemic and really start to think differently about how we are the heart of learning, caring and support in this community. So many of our students need us and our community needs us as an institution to help them overcome something that we have never experienced as children ourselves. I think the timing and the robust quality of this work helps us to shift and send a signal that it is not business as usual — it’s got to be different.”

The board members look forward to seeing the strategic plan in action.

“I’m excited to see how we implement it as well and the growth of it,” Secretary Edward Williams said. “I’m sure it was a lot of hard work. I’m glad you all took on that task.”

“This strategic plan is going to be something,” Treasurer Robert Roscoe said. “I’m kind of excited about that, just to see how it takes action and takes form.”