Our Lakewood City Schools have made significant progress over these past few years.
The quality of teaching and learning and the quality of the day-to-day learning experiences of our students in our schools continues to be strong.
Our school district has been very careful in the expenditure of our tax dollars and we are grateful to the citizens of Lakewood for trusting us with their tax dollars and approving a 6.9 mill operating levy in May 2010. Despite the passing of the levy, the district's expenses continue to outstrip revenues and thus the administration and Board are constantly looking at ways to keep costs under control. This includes $4.3 million worth of cuts made after the levy passed.
We continue to have good working relations with our school administrative, certified, and classified employees. However, for the 2010-2011 school year, the district will have 62 less positions than it did in the previous year, which will have some impact on district operations.
We continue to have an outstanding Board of Education diligently working to get the most amount of educational value out of each dollar expended.
From this context, the following goals have been identified for our schools for the 2010-2011 school year:
1. To improve student achievement:
- To realize a full year of academic growth for each and every student during the 2010-2011 school year.
- To align curriculum and instruction to the new state academic standards
- To provide for the needs of students through necessary interventions
- To implement the Ohio Improvement Process
- Adjust to changing organizational capacities
- Implement the Board resolution “Continuous Improvement of the Lakewood City Schools Athletic Department and Recreation Department Programming”
- Improve enforcement of Code of Conduct and Dress Code
- Explore the feasibility and the pros/cons of campus wear
2. To provide for the fiscal stability of our Lakewood City Schools:
- To reduce and control staffing levels and expenditures everywhere possible.
- To explore all possibilities for increasing revenue that will have a positive impact on providing programs and services for our students
- To monitor and prepare for the yet-to-be-impacts of state funding support for the next biennium
- To respect the difficult times we are all experiencing in this economic downturn
- Explore the feasibility of closing a school building
- Identify potential program changes and staff reductions
- To provide for a “right sizing” of programs
- Maintain support for the next levy/bond issue
- Adjust to our new organizational capacity
3. To reach out to staff and community regarding our educational and financial realities:
- To develop a common message with key talking points to communicate these realities
- To provide for an understanding of the difficult programming and economic decisions to be made.
4. To have a collective bargaining processes that ares fair to our taxpayers and our employees.
- To work collaboratively with LTA, OAPSE 129 and OAPSE 134 to achieve this goal
- To be mindful of the economic realities and possibilities of these times.