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Davenport school district want help with its vision

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By Sheena Dooley | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 |

School board members in Davenport are reaching out to the community for help in crafting a new vision that will guide how the school district does business.

Richard Clewell and Ken Krumwiede, both board members, have already held discussions with four community groups regarding the direction the Davenport School District needs to take to tackle issues that range from decreasing student enrollment and state funding to meeting increasing student achievement targets.

Those groups include the Davenport Schools Foundation, the Quad-City Board of Realtors, DavenportOne and the Community Education Advisory Council.

In the coming weeks, they plan to meet with at least a dozen more organizations and hold several public forums before taking their information to the full board in October. The board will then use that information to craft a vision statement and a strategic plan that moves the district in that direction, Clewell and Krumwiede said.

Both board members declined to say what feedback they have received so far, saying it will be released when they report back to the full board this fall.

“This provides an intentional path to move the district forward,” Clewell said. “It is going to put us in a direction that the community points us in. The current vision statement doesn’t contain enough information to make that happen. It’s scattered.”

District leaders created the current vision statement, which is “to be the district of choice,” more than a decade ago. Clewell said the vision doesn’t work to move Davenport schools forward and instead has created confusion about its meaning.

Some have taken it to mean that students can attend the school of their choice in the district, while others have interpreted it to reflect how Davenport stacks up when compared to its counterparts in the Quad-Cities, Clewell said.

“It’s been so confusing,” Krumwiede said. “No one clearly understood it, and that’s one reason we are changing it.”

During their meetings with the community organization, the two board members pose one question to the eight to 10 people who represent that organization: “Based on your organization’s goals, what must the Davenport Community Schools deliver to best position our students for success?”

The hope is to start a dialogue and work with community groups to help produce students who are prepared for the “real world” when they graduate, while giving residents more of a say in how the district operates. It’s the first time in recent years the board has done so, Clewell said.

“We are learning from the community,” Clewell said. “When you talk to people, they see things from a whole other perspective … There are probably no smoking guns. Maybe you don’t have dramatic surprises, but as you are shaking hands and coming together, you are building relationships. While relationships aren’t that exciting, they lead to bigger things.”

Sheena Dooley can be contacted at (563) 383-2363 or sdooley@qctimes.com.