Evaluation of District Improvement Plans

First, I would like to say that I was not able to use our District Improvement Plan as it is not on our website to be used.  Also, it would be very difficult to compare our district’s plan to Austin’s.  We are on opposite ends of the educational spectrum with our little school not having as many people in our school as they have in one grade!  To this end, I have found the District Improvement Plan for a school I worked at formerly.  I will refer to the school as JISD and Austin ISD as AISD.

One of the first differences that I found in the two plans was that AISD created a flowchart that would show the plan for implementing the goals created by the District Improvement Committee.  With a district as large as AISD, you have to have a plan for getting the information out to all the campuses and teachers.  JISD has five campuses so there was not a need for the flowchart.

Looking at the district goals and desired results, both districts have stated goals and how they goals will be measured.  One HUGE difference is the amount of money being used in the State Compensatory Education.  JISD had 1.6 million earmarked.  AISD on the other hand had 37.6 million.  Both districts had the personnel that would be responsible for the goal listed.  They also both had the measurement that would show progress or lack there of.  Two differences that I noted were that AISD also had the needed resources for each goal and also activities that would be used to reach the goal.  Listing the amount of money that would be used was taken a step further because the district actually planned out activities so that all campuses of similar grades would be on the same page.  There are not similar campuses on JISD so the need for the planned activities was not as great.  By listing the resources, it allowed for the similar campus groups to gather the resources and make preparations to use the resources.  JISD did not have as great a need in having resources already in place so that there was a coordinated effort.

The funding was a huge difference between the two plans.  JISD was very simple in the fact that the only funding that was discussed in the plan was the budgeted funding of 1.6 million.  JISD also did not show any use of the monies towards salaried positions in their plan.  AISD, 0n the other hand, listed the 566 full time staff positions that would be funded by their amount.  The funding resources for AISD also listed numerous external grants.  JISD did not show any sources of external funding.  Along with the external funding, there was a specific recipient for the funding.

Due to the size of the district, specifics were a much bigger deal to AISD.  In our situation here in Paducah, just knowing the goals and money would be a start for discussion.  In AISD the money needed to be spent on paper so that the district could plan accordingly.  JISD is in between Paducah ISD and AISD size wise.  JISD would need to list the personnel responsible like AISD, where we would all be responsible for implementing any plans since we all wear many hats.  Some small schools, like ours, could learn something from AISD and the attention to detail that they showed in their planning.