Strategic Plan

At the heart of this initiative is empowering our staff with the right data at the right time, all in one place. These activities will enable more effective monitoring of student progress and interventions to help our educators focus their time and energy on supporting students.

• Activity 1: Develop new tools and processes to improve access to accurate data and timely insights for teachers, support staff, principals and department leaders to make data-driven decisions

• Activity 2: Bring together all critical student data into a single dashboard aligned to holistic multi-tiered systems of support across Pre K-12
• Activity 3: Build strong district leadership routines for data review and reflection that ensure we are effectively executing our most important work and driving a focus on our outcomes

This initiative focuses on increasing the transparency and predictability in school staffing. By creating more efficient and equitable systems for resource distribution, school leaders are better able to develop strong, stable school communities. As a result, students, families and staff will experience more consistent and equitable learning environments across our schools.

• Activity 1: Increase the predictability of school staffing through enhanced and expanded pathway programs and partnerships
• Activity 2: Improve the efficiency of hiring practices to create and maintain stable school communities
• Activity 3: Improve the equitable alignment of staff allocations to student, school and department needs

This initiative aims to create safe, welcoming and well maintained schools by improving facility planning and budget management. A long-term facilities plan will identify necessary upgrades to better support student learning, along with a simpler system for tracking facility maintenance. Additionally, clearer budgeting processes will ensure that resources align directly with student and staff needs. As a result, staff, students and families will benefit from improved school environments, greater transparency and confidence that district resources effectively support their school communities.

• Activity 1: Conduct a facilities master plan to assess our facilities and plan for the future
• Activity 2: Strengthen budget development, monitoring tools, and processes that maximize the efficacy and efficiency of our limited resources

This initiative builds on existing safety practices to further protect students and staff. By using data to better understand and prevent student and staff injuries and by enhancing security measures like cameras and weapons detection systems, schools will proactively maintain safe learning environments. Students, staff and families will experience increased confidence that their schools and learning environments are safe and secure.

• Activity 1: Analyze data to understand trends in student-caused injuries to predict and prevent harm
• Activity 2: Improve the physical security of schools through enhanced layered security systems and staff training

We know that helping students learn and access education is closely tied to supporting their feelings and mental health. To provide better support, we are creating a complete student wellness team that brings together mental health staff and learning specialists. This approach, which includes building stronger social and emotional skills in elementary schools, will improve teamwork and create a reliable response to urgent needs in our schools—one that considers all parts of what students need while staying consistent across the district.

• Activity 1: Train new multidisciplinary response teams to deliver support for behavior and social-emotional skills to classrooms and students.
• Activity 2: Standardize social-emotional learning time in elementary schools with a clear scope and sequence.

Supporting our students and families starts with building understanding through authentic engagement. This initiative ensures we leverage our data–from student feedback in our school climate surveys to our daily attendance–to help us respond to how students feel about teaching, learning, school climate and belonging. As we get better at understanding and using this feedback, we will be better able to respond to the needs of our students and share key findings with our community, creating a shared responsibility for keeping students engaged and successful.

• Activity 1: Provide tools, training and systems to interpret and act on student feedback data and develop action plans to increase students’ sense of belonging.
• Activity 2: Increase effectiveness and usefulness of direct-to-student / family supports by streamlining and integrating centralized services.
• Activity 3: Expand parent and community shared responsibility for student attendance through improved communication.

To enhance clarity and alignment of support to students, we are developing a Continuum of Student Supports—a framework that helps administrators and special educators match students with the most supportive programs that best serve their needs. This includes establishing a transparent and consistent placement process, standardizing documentation for all interventions and expanding program capacity to better meet demand. Our goal is to ensure that every student is placed in an environment that best supports their learning, emotional and behavioral growth.

• Activity 1: Improve the process for identifying and placing students in the least restrictive special education programs.
• Activity 2: Expand the capacity of behavior trainers who work directly with building-based staff to understand and productively address student behavior challenges.
• Activity 3: Relocate and expand the Behavior Intervention Center to a Behavioral Health Center to improve our most intensive student supports.

High-quality instructional materials are one of the most powerful levers for improving student learning, particularly when paired with effective teaching and support systems. We are conducting a districtwide adoption of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) across all core content areas and grade levels. This initiative represents a shift to a more coherent system that supports all learners, including our rapidly expanding Dual-Language program, centered upon the four domains of literacy that all students need to engage in content across all subjects: reading, writing,
listening and speaking. By establishing clear instructional visions and frameworks, we are not just providing new materials but defining the “Salem-Keizer way” of teaching and learning.

• Activity 1: Build a single instructional vision and framework that guides how grade-level instruction happens in each academic discipline.
• Activity 2: Select, adopt and begin to implement new, high-quality curricula in math, social studies and literacy by 2027.
• Activity 3: Increase teacher training to focus on curriculum internalization and implementation.

With our renewed focus on instructional materials comes the need for a cohesive assessment system that provides meaningful data to inform teaching. We will build a comprehensive system that ensures information about standards proficiency is systematically captured and utilized across all schools. This initiative will establish consistent interim assessments and strengthen data analysis practices districtwide.

• Activity 1: Adopt literacy and math benchmark assessments for assessed grade levels.
• Activity 2: Engage in improvement cycles of PK-12 assessment practices to inform instructional shifts.

The success of our academic excellence strategy depends on robust professional learning opportunities for all staff. We are committed to providing increased professional development time focused on new instructional materials, effective data practices and collaborative problem solving.

By strengthening professional learning communities and ensuring adequate collaboration time, we will support continuous improvement in teaching practices across the district.

• Activity 1: Provide professional learning that trains teachers on key instructional practices aligned with the math and literacy instructional frameworks.
• Activity 2: Provide professional learning that trains our classified staff on key practices aligned to our instructional frameworks and that support the academic, behavioral and social-emotional needs of our students.
• Activity 3: Ensure adequate teacher collaboration time for planning and internalizing lessons, analyzing and responding to assessment data and refining instructional practices.