The superintendent of schools for MSAD/ RSU 40 said a document apparently copied in large part from that of another school district was only the first step in a long process.
At the Sept. 27 meeting of the RSU 40 Board of Directors, Warren resident Hugh Magbie called the board’s attention to the apparent similarities between a draft strategic plan Supt. Susan Pratt posted on the district’s website and RSU 21’s plan, finalized in 2012.
“Everything in this plan has nothing to do with RSU 40,” Magbie said Sept. 29 of Supt. Andrew Dolloff’s plan for RSU 21. “His plan was done two years ago. The realities he faced two years ago are nothing like the ones we face now. How can Arundel, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport relate to Warren, Union, Washington, Friendship and Waldoboro?”
“When it was presented it was said it was one of many, many drafts,” Pratt said Oct. 1. She said no other drafts have been written to date. “There should have been a cover letter that went with it. There was not.”
The RSU 40 plan is labeled “First Draft” and contains no attribution to the original document from which it was taken. According to the appendix in the original 2010 document, RSU 21 district serves a population of 2700 students with 286 of these being tuitioned from outside the district and 735 attending high school.
In its appendix, the RSU 40 version says that district has 1844 students, none of whom are listed as being from outside the district. Medomak Valley High School has 558 students.
Dolloff said he has not seen Pratt’s document and that it was hard to imagine how a plan as specific as the one produced for RSU 21 could serve another district.
“It’s a pretty extensive document,” Dolloff said. “We put quite an effort into it.” He said the year-and-a-half long process involved a lot of meetings and many revisions.
After an executive session at the end of the Sept. 27 meeting, the RSU 40 board voted on the following motion:
“Having heard from the superintendent, I have no doubt that the first draft of the strategic plan was intended as she told us at the time, as a starting point, and I therefore vote that we direct her to work on a second draft, taking into consideration views expressed by the vision committee.”
The motion was made by Tod Brown and seconded by Sandra O’Farrell, and received unanimous approval from the board. RSU 40 board Chairman Danny Jackson was not available to answer questions for this story, but made the following statement.
“The board fully considered the concerns raised about the strategic plan and was convinced that the superintendent never intended to misrepresent the plan as her own work. We are pleased with the direction the superintendent is taking the district in and want to continue the good work on our plan,” Jackson said.
“Over the next three-to-five years what must RSU 40 become to be responsive to the current and future needs of our children?”
She said notes from the March 31 meeting of approximately 100 community members have been transcribed.
“We came up with numerous comments, thoughts, hopes, observations,” Magbie said of the meeting in which he took part. “I thought it would result in a document that would reflect the group’s efforts, the community’s efforts for the vision of the school district for the future.”
Pratt said she is the only person who worked on the current version of RSU 40’s plan and said she planned to share future drafts with board members and administrative and support staff who participated in planning a March 31 visioning day at which community members provided input for the process.
“The public will have an opportunity to participate,” Pratt said. She said her office would notify those who have already been part of the strategic planning effort, of future opportunities to be involved. Other interested parties may ask to be notified.
“Before it’s adopted there will be multiple opportunities,” she said.
While most of Pratt’s text reads as a verbatim copy of the original, the RSU 40 draft leaves out the word “prosperous” in describing the future it seeks to create for students and schools
Many of the changes appear to be minor, such as the replacement of the word “lagging” for “anemic” in describing the general economic circumstances. In several places, the RSU 21 plan refers to the goal of offering a “world class” education to its students. This phrase has been omitted throughout the RSU 40 draft, with the phrase “first class” substituted on one occasion.
Pratt said she had no idea why she made those substitutions.
“There was no particular direction to my changes,” she said.
References in the RSU 21 plan to community involvement, especially those that call for community investment in the local schools, did not appear in the RSU 40 draft.
“I was just looking through some things,” Pratt said. “It was intended to be gone over word by word by word with the board.” She said attempts to schedule a workshop meeting with the board have been unsuccessful.
While the RSU 40 draft includes photographs of students that appear in the original RSU 21 document, quotations from parents and other district citizens that demonstrate the collaborative process that produced the strategic plan were not copied to the RSU 40 draft, nor were similar comments that may have been made at the RSU 40 March 31 meeting inserted in those places.
Pratt said her instructions from the board call on her to insert such information in a second draft.
In the section on core beliefs, RSU 40 leaves out this statement: “All students deserve to be surrounded by staff members who are skilled, knowledgeable and caring,” as well as a sentence saying the district has set “ambitious performance targets.”
RSU 40’s draft includes a call for assessment of teaching and learning to gauge “where support is needed to move toward a mass customized learning model,” something that does not appear in the RSU 21 strategic plan. According to the website at learningfirst.org, mass customized learning is “the capacity to routinely customize products and services through computer applications and technologies to meet the specific needs and/or desires of individuals without adding significantly to the cost of the product or service.”
The website gives as examples iTunes’ transformation of the music industry and Amazon’s influence on the traditional book store industry.
Magbie said the agenda for the March meeting included a discussion of 21st century teaching and learning, a framework that, according to the website at p21.org, “combines a discrete focus on 21st century student outcomes…with innovative support systems to help students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the 21st century.”
“There’s nothing about that in the plan,” Magbie said “The superintendent wanted us to talk about it when we met.” He said the Pratt’s draft showed nothing that was brought to the table by either the district administration or community members.
Pratt gave no reason for omitting standards for high school achievement in writing and science along with those for mathematics and reading. All four content areas are included in the original RSU 21 plan.
The RSU 21 plan calls for a 10-year capital improvement plan. In the RSU 40 draft, that is changed to call for a 5-year plan.
“I have no idea what the board will want to do with that,” Pratt said. She said the district used to get additional funding from credit card company MBNA and that looking for support from businesses and community members is “a board decision because it does take some commitment on everybody’s part.”
When listing its strengths, RSU 21 touts a high level of community engagement. There is no reference to community engagement in this section of the RSU 40 draft.
In the RSU 40 list, experienced and knowledgeable staff, a strength in RSU 21, is not listed at all.
“I have no idea why that wasn’t there.” Pratt said.
Pratt said she has looked at strategic plans from “many, many” other districts and would share them with the board when they have their workshop meeting.
When asked if she sees strategic planning as a valuable process, she said, “I see it as a process. It’s not an event. It’s not a document. It’s a process.” She said RSU 40 began a similar effort many years ago, as SAD 40, but that it was never completed.
Dolloff said involving the RSU 21 community throughout the process brought to the surface ideas he had not anticipated. Referring to what he called “the collective intelligence of the groups that participated” he said the ideas and suggestions of more than 100 participants “were far beyond what a smaller group could have done on their own.”
Pratt said she expects the strategic planning process to take 12 to 18 months.
For more information about the strategic planning process, contact Supt. Susan Pratt at the RSU 40 Administrative Office at 785-2277 or by email at susan_pratt@msad40.org.
