Recently, the St. Cloud Times writer, Dave Aeikens, wrote a nice article about the TeamWorks training that is going on in District 742. On that same day, the Editorial Board wrote an article stating that they feel this is a poor investment of money in these tough economic times. We spent $42,000 dollars of the $50,000 budget this past year on the consulting services of TeamWorks; we have once again budgeted $50,000 for the 2009-2010 school year.
The objective of this training is to assist us in three areas:
- management/leadership development
- school board governance
- strategic planning
The intention is to bring about improve leadership, increase student achievement and allow for greater transparency of the measures of achievement. The leadership and governance training will create opportunities to build trusting relationships, increase participation from all stakeholders, improve decision-making and enhance professional development. We have already aligned our vision and mission with our core values and the strategic direction of the district.
This entire process has already, and will continue to, raise the "professionalism" bar. My question to all stakeholders is simple, "Are you supportive of the objectives above?"
This has been a great adventure and will continue to be with the support of this community. After all, we have seen so much change to education and our community that we can not afford to remain idle. We must change, and we can not afford evolutionary change, we must aspire to "revolutionary change." It is my belief that this is possible by spending just 1/2 of 1% of our budget to do this. Join us by supporting the possibilities of what we are calling a "LeaderShift" in the St. Cloud Area School District.
