CITY SCHOOL OFFICIALS TO MEET WITH LEADERS IN PLANNING PROCESS

An upcoming educational summit in Cape Girardeau will bring together key community leaders in an effort to get them thinking and talking about schools.

The summit will be held Jan. 23 and actually kicks off the district's long-range planning process.

Superintendent Neyland Clark said, "We are going to talk about the pressures of modern public education, where the nation is going in terms of education, and some of the real burning issues.

"We are also going to talk about where we fit in to all this and what happens to us."

Following presentation of information, Clark said, a dinner paid for by private contributions will be held.

"We want to let people talk to each other about what they have heard and about what they think," he said.

In addition to getting people to think and talk about education, Clark said the summit will bring together many people from different interest groups.

"Perhaps for the first time people will have a chance to hear from the multigroups we deal with," said Clark. "We will pull together the various publics we hear from and let them talk to each other."

Some individuals attending the summit will also be asked to serve on subcommittees for programs, facilities and finance.

Two of three subcommittee chairmen have been named. Sue Balsamo will head the program subcommittee and Bob Fox will head the facilities subcommittee. A chairman has not been named for the finance subcommittee.

Clark explained that the Project Partnership subcommittees are advisory panels only.

"They are designed to solicit input and gauge the perceptions of the community and the expectations of the district," Clark said. "The ultimate responsibility of the board and administration is to create a long-range plan and assign strategies to reach those goals."

Clark said he expects each subcommittee to hold public hearings to solicit input and to consider those opinions in drafting their recommendations.

He said he expects the process to be complete and a five-year plan in hand by June.

"This will be a fast and furious semester," Clark said.

In addition to the summit and subsequent subcommittee meetings, the district is in the process of surveying individuals about their expectations for schools, and is collecting data about the district.

"We have a feeling internally that we have a really good school district," Clark said. "We also have a community with extremely high expectations.

"The community expects programs at a level that surpasses most districts in the state. There are a lot of things in the system that work," Clark said.

For example, he said, district SAT scores show students who take the test consistently score well above the national average.

"We need data like that to measure the effectiveness of our delivery of services," Clark said.

"We have a lot of programs that we need to do some hard data analysis of.

Clark will speak at the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce First Friday Coffee about Project Partnership and the state of the schools.