What’s new @ WCA!

What’s new @ WCA!
Posted on 04/16/2018
Superintendent Barry Schmidt
  It seems that the 2017-18 school year is flying by quickly. Somehow, through the frigid temps and the lack of snow, we have arrived at spring. In the classrooms, students have many tasks and lots of excitement left in their year. At the District Office, even as we work to close this school year strong, we have begun planning for the 2018-19 school year.
With that planning in mind, we look at the previous year and understand WCA has embarked on several new initiatives. These initiatives include: creating and implementing the Strategic Roadmap, investing in educational programs, investing in WCA staff with Professional Learning Communities and implementing better ways to communicate with all WCA stakeholders. The Strategic Roadmap will be guiding the district in its mission (To Challenge and Support our Students, Staff and Families in each person’s growth as an engaged learner and successful citizen of our community) and the direction we will follow for the coming years.
First of all, effective communication is essential to create strong school-home partnerships and to increase parental involvement. The primary focus of the Strategic Roadmap is to continue building higher levels of trust, communicate and connect with all stakeholders. One of the ways for effective communication to occur is to have a place where parents and the community can access district information. Those places are the district website isd2342.org and the district app. Communication between the school district, families and the community is key to the success of any school district.
Another important part of West Central Area Schools strategic plan involves the implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). In essence, PLCs are groups of educators who are committed to working together to help each child be more successful in school and to ensure students are not only taught, but ensure that they learn. What do PLCs do? They are grade level teams that work together to study data about student academic performance in their curricular area and share successful instructional practices with one another. As we are continuing to invest in our students and staff, our goal is to reach full implementation for the 2018-2019 school year. In order to implement PLCs next year, we need to make sure they are effective and ongoing. WCA will have 6 PLC early releases, 1 Wednesday a month and 3 half-day professional development days. We are excited about the positive impact PLCs will have for our students and we are eager to see the positive impact PLCs will have for all students for the following year.  We realize changes to the school day can be disruptive to parents and children; however, we will be releasing students 15 minutes earlier at 1:30 pm.