APS' five-year strategic plan is to 'do better'

A failure to plan is a plan for failure.

So to that end, Albuquerque Public Schools officials and school board members unveiled a five-year strategic plan, about a year in the making, to over a hundred administrators and other community members at a Wednesday morning summit dubbed “Emerging Stronger.”

“APS, like many other urban districts, had a tendency over the last number of years to chase that silver bullet. The next shiny thing would come along, and we would say, ‘Oh, that’s what’s going to fix us,’ ” Superintendent Scott Elder said. “We’d do a few years of something, and then people would get frustrated that it wasn’t showing immediate results.”

“We have got to set a plan,” he added.

The plan, centered around goals and guardrails laid out earlier this year, includes input from over 2,000 parents, students, educators and others, district officials boasted.

It lays out four strategic priorities, along with general steps to make them a reality:

• Clear expectations — to make good on its goals and strategic plan, APS says it will need to first communicate them to all of its community, and that it will create a report card to track its progress.
• Rigorous instruction — to help provide some of its most historically underserved students a sufficient education, the district will “insist that students be taught math and English Language Arts at grade level,” make sure they have equitable access to instructional materials, prioritize educator professional development and “do a better job serving our special education students.”
• Engaged students — in part to curb the number of APS students who are chronically absent and support children’s mental health after the pandemic, APS plans to “prioritize social-emotional learning” and work to make schools places students want to go to every day.
• Responsive and coordinated systems — to enhance district communication with school leaders and parents, APS says it will work to better engage with families about major decisions like changes in policies and incidents impacting their children’s schools in their native languages.

APS’ progress on the board goals will be monitored by the school board, and district officials also have an internal document that lays out, step by step, who is responsible for specific parts of the strategic plan and when that should be completed.

“I’m excited because the accountability piece is there,” Chief of Schools Channell Segura said.

When something in the strategic plan isn’t working, officials say they will have the accountability systems in place to inform them when they need to pivot. But Elder also said the district still needs feedback from its community.

“We have to do better, APS has to take responsibility, and it has to change the way it does business,” Elder said. “But we can’t do it alone. We need your feedback.”

Multiple high school seniors showed up at the summit to provide exactly that.

“A focus on making a better individual, rather than a high-performing student, might be something to include in these achievement goals,” said Amaranta Manzanares-Juarez, an Albuquerque High School senior. “A student who goes home and tests and focuses on academics only is possibly just as valuable as a student who is involved in their community and is a good leader.”

“This is my last year, and they changed everything,” Sandia High School senior Taylor Trussell added. “My schedule and my timing — everything got switched up. So I would just like more students to be heard.”