Superintendent Stresses 'Continuous Improvement' for District 833 Schools

District 833 Superintendent Mark Porter is pleased with the performance of his school district in comparison to those across the metro and the nation.

But that doesn’t mean he’s completely satisfied.

Porter is prompting school board members, other district leaders and parents to get involved in a “continuous improvement team.”

The focus of the team, Porter said, will be to “oversee the (district’s) continuous improvement and performance excellence efforts.”

The team will meet on a monthly basis to examine how to make the district more proficient in an array of educational areas; it will have a more broad-based focus than some committees the school board meets with.

“It’s not going to be overly prescriptive—this is not going to be a group that’s going to sit there and tell everybody how to do their jobs,” Porter said. “It’s going to try and create resource in some ways that we can look at to implement continuous improvement and performance excellence across all areas.”

The team will be likely comprised of representatives from the teachers union, school board members, principals, other district leaders and a handful of community members. In all, the group will include 10-12 people, Porter said.

Porter added that the community members—about four in all—would be people who have been involved in the board’s strategic planning process.

Board member Leslee Boyd said the idea for the team is a good one on paper, but she’s unsure if all of the people mentioned as possible team members will be able to meet on a monthly basis.

“I can easily foresee half of them not being able to come on a given night. My concern would be that we would have a very small group,” she said. “That’s a really small group to be making those kinds of decisions.”

Porter acknowledged Boyd’s concerns, but said finding people who will have time to be part of the team will be part of the recruitment process.

“We’ll work really hard to make sure we can get people who can attend,” he said. “We need to find people who can make a commitment of time to this. I’m very excited to bring this type of guiding influence across the district so it doesn’t become an individual effort, but a true collective effort to guide the continuous improvement process.”

Ideally, Porter said he’d like to have the group formed as soon as possible so it can begin discussing ways of improving education throughout South Washington County Schools and giving recommendations to the school board.