At the end of the 2020-21 school year, School Superintendent Tim Smith and the Escambia School Board began work on a five-year strategic plan.
“The plan sets a roadmap for where we’re going, and one of the important pieces of that was engaging the community and our team members within the school district,” Smith said on WCOA this morning. “An exhaustive process was conducted where a tremendous amount of input was gathered as to where should our school district go and what direction should we move forward in.”
The framework that was introduced last August was built on the vision “United For Every Student to Succeed” and with focus areas— students, employees, leadership, business, and community. Smith said, “What’s happening now is we have teams that are taking that plan and setting objectives and action items. So the plan is being now really crafted toward what is it going to look like in action.”
He sees unity as a key element of the vision and strategic plan and provides a means of dealing with the struggles and challenges of the appointed superintendent framework.
“We’re going through some growing pains right now with that. Do we change our school superintendent governance structure after two years? I personally think that’s not enough time when you take a core system (elected superintendent) and change that,” said Smith.
“After two years, we really don’t want to quit. What we want to do is we want to persevere. We want to show some grit and determination and make our system the framework that it needs to be. So anytime you do this, you’re subject to growing pains, and I think that’s exactly what’s taking place here. So we need to have some fortitude, and it would be premature to switch a governance structure after a couple years.”
Here is the plan: https://www.thefutureofecsd.org/ecps-strategic-plan