St. Clair Today

The Anchor Bay School District provided an update on its strategic plan during a recent board meeting.

The revising of the plan has been in the works for over a year and includes a new mission and vision statement. Administrators based the plan on the abilities they wanted graduates to have and boiled it down to 16 attributes. Areas that the district is focused on enhancing include education, motivation, cultivation and collaboration. A new logo was revealed based on these dynamics.

“We wanted our students to be college and career ready. We wanted increased college credit opportunities. We wanted to have career experiences beginning from kindergarten through 12th grade. We wanted to move towards industry-recognized certifications for all students before they graduate,” said Superintendent Phil Jankowski. "Internships and apprenticeships, (along with) flexible pacing (will all be offered). Grade levels that we're not just grouping students based off of that they were born within this 12-month period, so we were expecting them all to achieve at the same pace. Some students will be able to be accelerated, some need interventions. And basically project-based learning. It's not enough for them to have recall and to be able to fill in a bubble. They need to be able to take this information and apply it in some meaningful fashion in a novel situation.”

Based on this new portrait of a graduate, the district determined to follow a competency based education model to best support all students and teachers. They created a five-year plan to implement new focuses and techniques into their curriculum. They have specific goals each year for curriculum and instructional development, with the first year looking at creating new standards for each grade, adding instructional coaches, adding informational reading, and doing more exploratory enrichment. They also plan to focus more on data results to help advance or assist students who aren’t in the typical learning rate.

The district has also added new programs this year to address student mental health and better support overall social-emotional health. Over the next five years, they want to add more before and after-school programs that align with what students want and enjoy. The goal is to have students more engaged in their school life and create a positive learning culture with their peers.