TOLEDO, Ohio — The Toledo Public Schools Board of Education on Tuesday approved a strategic plan to better shape the future of its more than 22,000 students.
The new plan reflects what the community wants for the biggest school district in northwest Ohio, TPS Superintendent Romules Durant said.
"We brought in students. We brought staff members in. We bought community members in, our own cabinet, our workforce," Durant said.
It was necessary to create a new strategic plan because the previous one was over a decade old, according to TPS.
The plan is intended to embody everyone in the district, whether they are a community partner or a student.
"As a student, seeing that you could be a part of something like that, it was really amazing," Avishkar Ramdeo, a recent graduate of Woodward High School and participant in the study groups that TPS gathered input from for the strategic plan, said.
The district also has a new set of core values and goals that are focused on growth, mindset and positivity.
Leaders say they sent out more than 200 surveys to the community and had more than 90 students give feedback on what was important to them.
TPS hired the Experience Management Institute, an organization that according to its website "works to create more engaged employees and efficient organizations," to assist in creating the strategic plan.
And not only is the plan strategic, but so is the wording, EXMI Co-founder Emily Douglas McNab said.
"We knew that we had to be very deliberate in the words that we selected," she said. "Even things like, instead of the strategic plan's vision starting off with 'Toledo Public Schools,' it starts off with 'We.' Anyone who says it, they're part of that."
Durant said the plan reflects the positive changes the district has been making and that it will help guide more purpose-driven decisions in the future.
"When you think about our magnet school and all our career tech programs, we're going to continue to ramp those things up," he said. "You're going to see more and more announcements each year, as well as month after month, regarding something new that kids can explore or get into."
A brief from TPS about the strategic plan can be read below: