Sparta school board’s goals target student achievement, communication/perception, and finances

Sparta. The Sparta school board approved three goals as part of the district’s strategic plan.

The goals are to: improve student achievement, improve communication and perception, and improve finance and operations.

“Education, as we know it, has changed,” said School board president Craig Palleschi said. “The objectives moving forward will be sensitive to the new needs of our learning community.”

Palleschi said there were so many objectives the board could have set but took the opportunity to narrow them to three achievable ones.

He said Superintendent Matthew Beck and Assistant Superintendent Tara Rossi will work with district teams and school-based teams from each building to develop district directives, which will be presented to the school board later.

“Focus is essential,” Palleschi said. “Developing clear goals and objectives that are visible for our students, teachers, administrators and community to see is vital.”

He said the objectives will be public and simple, and that positive change takes time.

MJO Enterprises delivered its Phase 1 analysis on Nov. 30, and the data has been reviewed by a committee. Those takeaways were discussed on Jan. 14.

A previous plan — called Vision 2025 — was put into place in 2019 and set to go through 2025. Palleschi said that plan was very general and broad-based. It provided the district with good data but provided no specific analysis, he said.