The Off-Season: Maintaining Our School Priorities
Educators, families, and communities are redoubling efforts to emphasize and implement their priorities during this "off-season." As conferences and meetings convene throughout the summer in so many places, the topics of discussion continue to target the inadequacies of the No Child Left Behind federal mandate, how best to achieve partnerships across locales and school systems, high quality teacher recruitment and training, and a host of other very important issues of concern pertaining to school age education. With the goal being to achieve substantive improvements in the core learning areas for a broad spectrum of students, administrators are tasked with shifting and allocating human and financial resources in ways that can produce these results more efficiently and effectively. Families are evaluating consistently failing neighborhood schools, nonresponsive and poorly trained classroom teachers, and most importantly, their children's academic needs for the upcoming year. State and local jurisdictions are suddenly confronted with severe budget shortages which translate into less money available to allocate toward programs and initiatives that typically supplement school budgets. All in all, while there is much work to be done during this "off-season," the pool of resources available to complete the work continues to dwindle. As we gather for our strategic sessions across the country, we must be adamant and vigilant about developing work plans that are achievable and can be successful during uncertain and declining economic climates.
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