When spring is in full swing, the air is always full of excitement for our students, staff and community. I love seeing everyone in our schools packing in all the learning, growth and fun this time of year. It really is a special time!

The board of education has continued to lay the foundation for our strategic planning work. As I mentioned last month, we hosted a series of meetings in late 2022 to listen to suggestions and ideas from people across the community. During this process, we recorded 1,250 comments from more than 200 community attendees.

We have been working hard — board members, district and building leaders as well as our staff teams — to apply this feedback to the work we do in our schools every day. The first step in this process was identifying six strategic themes for our district:

• Educate for excellence

• Support exploration and engagement opportunities • Communicate to build trust

• Connect with family and community

• Invest in faculty and staff

• Align resources with facilities and infrastructure It’s been very rewarding to organize the community comments into six areas of focus. The needs and aspirations of our local community will be embedded in our work over the months and years to come.

The theme development has also inspired me to reflect on many things happening in our schools. Educate for excellence, for example, is already in action. We have many teachers taking advantage of professional development opportunities. I get excited when educators grow their knowledge because I know the benefits go straight to our students.

For example, several of our elementary teachers are interested in completing a specialized training known as LETRS, which is pronounced like letters and stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling. This professional learning goal will expose our teachers to the latest research and teaching methods to build students’ literacy skills. LETRS training can take more than 160 hours to complete, and we are working hard to help them reach their goal in the next two years.

There is excitement among staff at the secondary level as well, as we make plans to grow career and technical education programs, called CTE. I look forward to sharing more about this over the summer.

Over the past eight months, I have often used the term “Let’s Grow!” The things I’ve shared here are just a small sample of the inspiring work happening every day in our schools. I am proud of everyone, and proud of the efforts at every attendance center. We are working together, digging into the state standards, looking at our current curriculum, exploring new options, trying out new software and even piloting a new math curriculum.

If you’d like to hear more details, please reach out. I’d love to chat about our work and how it will benefit our students and community.

The future is as bright as ever because USD 327 is made up of wonderful people — including you.

Let’s Grow!

Deena Hilbig is the superintendent of USD 327. She can be reached at (785) 4725561.