RC Superintendent Tidbits
By: Mark Otten
What drives the decisions we make on a daily basis? When you work in education, the answer is pretty simple, kids. However, that is also a pretty broad answer. Rock County Public Schools went through the strategic planning process with Nebraska Rural Community Schools Association during the 2021-2022 school year. We now have identified goals to help drive our decisions towards what is best for our students, staff, and community.
Our staff worked on action plans to work towards accomplishing the goals set during the process. We will be implementing some of those action plans immediately. RCPS will be hosting an open house for all students and their parents on August 9 from 5:00-6:00 PM. There will also be a 7th grade orientation following the open house from 6:00-6:30. This will allow incoming 7th grade students to meet some of their main teachers, tour the building again, and learn the lay of the land better prior to walking into the high school on the first day of school.
Another identified goal was to have our Multi-Tiered Student Success (MTSS) Leadership team identify a social-emotional screener for use with our students. FastBridge is a social-emotional screener that can also be used as an academic screener to identify strengths and needs in our students. This screener will be implemented at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year and will be used to help drive intervention instruction.
The final goal I will touch on today is the goal to have a facilities plan. Our facilities are aging and the wear and tear on them is showing. Throughout the course of this school year, I will be working with our school board facilities committee members to develop a plan moving forward which will address the updates/upgrades needed to keep our facilities in good shape. This will also require financial resources so it will be tied pretty closely with our budget in future years.