The Dothan City School Board said, “Yes, you can,” to Yes We Can! Dothan on Monday, approving the organization’s blueprint for school improvement.
The board passed the organization’s co-owned strategic plan, an agreement between the community and the schools to pursue educational excellence.
The plan’s basic goals are improving graduation rates and college and work force preparation, setting high standards for schools and the community, improving parental involvement, securing a stable funding base for schools and boosting public support of the schools.
Plan specifics are too lengthy to completely cover, but a few highlights include:
Creating pacing guides for each grade.
Creating databases to track student performance by subgroups, schools and classes to provide educators with specific information about their students.
Posting school performance data throughout schools and hold public forums at each school to discuss school improvement efforts.
Making quarterly assessments of school performance, cleanliness and efficiency.
Develop programs to gain community trust in the school system.
Increasing use of technology to keep parents informed about school events and their students’ progress.
The plan was the result of many months of planning and meetings between Yes We Can! leaders, city school officials and the community.
Dell Goodwin, Dothan City School personnel director, praised the organization leaders for their work.
“If we put a dollar value that’s close to their regular salary for their time, we’d be close to about $100,000,” she said.
The Yes We Can! Dothan program is based on a similar grassroots community education advocacy program in Mobile that supporters say helped improve the school system there.
“If Mobile can do it, we can do it,” Morris Slingluff, Yes We Can! co-chair, said. “Mobile children aren’t any smarter than Dothan children, and Mobile teachers aren’t any better than Dothan teachers.”
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