District 65 officials are calling on the public to weigh in on the district’s new five-year strategic plan, which will take effect at the start of the 2015-16 academic year.

The plan will detail the school district’s goals to better students’ educational experiences.

Community members are invited to apply by Friday to join one of five working committees, each of which is focused on a different aspect of school life. The committees will collaborate to prepare a draft of the strategic plan to be presented to the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education by late February or early March, board member Candance Chow said.

“It’s actually the right time to begin thinking on where the district needs to go and what are the key strategies and actions we need to embark on to get us there,” she said.

The school’s mission statement was recently updated to reflect school officials’ goals and feedback from new superintendent Paul Goren who was appointed in March. The statement will lay the groundwork for the strategic plan.

The public is invited to submit input on the drafted statement.

The new mission of District 65 is to “inspire and prepare each student to achieve academically, grow personally, and contribute positively to our global society by providing an engaging and enriching educational experience in a creative and collaborative environment,” according to the district’s site.

On Oct. 20, the mission statement, revised with community input, will be presented at a board meeting.

With the previous five-year plan expiring at the end of the school year, Chow, who also serves as the board’s strategic planning liaison, said the board wanted to engage the community to ensure the strategy reflects the wishes of students’ parents.

“Before we start creating goals and strategies, we want to make sure that we’re driving toward the same unified mission,” she said. “It’s really healthy for a community like ours, every time they initiate a new planning process, to reassess our mission, properly reflect our hopes and desires for our children and what we intend on doing.”

The new strategic plan will rely on data collected from both the schools and the community that will help the district to teach its students, Chow said. This data does not only include numerical information on student achievement, such as standardized test scores. It also uses research that shows the general satisfaction of staff, students and parents with the environment within the schools.

“We’ll be looking more holistically at achievement and what the ingredients are of that achievement that we should be tracking and monitoring as progress continues,” she said.

This summer, the district hired Maria Allison as chief strategy officer. Allison, who previously worked at the Chicago Public Schools, was added to the district’s staff to help connect administration and smooth over the implementation process of the new strategic plan, Chow said.

At a District 65 board meeting on Sept. 22, Chow told members in a memo that as of Sept. 19, about 30 individuals nominated themselves or others to serve on committees. Officials had distributed information to the public about providing input on the new strategy through emails, guest editorials and the District 65 site, Chow said.

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