Academic Performance, Long-Term Planning on New School Report

The communications committee of the Summit Board of Education will present a special report at every regular meeting beginning in September during the upcoming school year, according to committee member Edgar Mokuvos.

To start, the committee has identified four key topics based on comments given by community members who filled out surveys distributed by the board a few months ago.

“The verbatim comments from the survey provided us with great input to get a sense of what is top of mind for people,” Mokuvos said.

The presentations, he said during Thursday’s board meeting, will take a form similar to one the board gave during the previous meeting on the results of the survey: data-focused, data-driven, succinct, to-the-point and clear.

The first topic Mokuvos mentioned was benchmarking Summit’s academic performance, which will include gathered data and a comparative analysis of where Summit stands against neighboring districts and within the state.

The second presentation will address what the district’s recently adopted five-year plan will mean for each school and what the plans will look like in terms of how they will expand.

“We figured that would dovetail into a discussion about safety and initiatives we’re doing to beef up security and safety in each of the schools,” Mokuvos said.

The third topic focuses on the transformation of the district’s guidance and counseling programs, including details about the resources being added to the guidance departments and what the programs will look like in the short-term and long-term.

The fourth mentioned report will discuss what the different curricula look like and the curriculum process.

“Even as board members, we don’t have a good idea of how the whole curriculum process works,” Mokuvos said. “This will include how the decision to change a curriculum is determined, who works on it and how it gets determined what curriculum gets changed.”

This presentation will also discuss some of the more interesting academic programs happening at different grade levels at the various schools.

“This is a starting point,” Mokuvos said. “We will bring in additional ideas next meeting to add on and a recommended draft of a calendar.”

Board President Gloria Ron-Fornes suggested the addition of a presentation on the updates that will be made to the board’s goals for the district. She also advised the committee to accommodate for mandatory reports, such as ones on the budget and ethics.

Superintendent Nathan Parker suggested that the committee should identify two or three focused insights it wants the community and district to know and talk about for each topic.