03/17/2012

School working group close to rolling out draft vision, mission statements for School Board consideration

A working group of community members, teacher, administrators and members of the School Board are "very close" to rolling out a draft vision and mission statement update for Cape Elizabeth schools.

Superintendent Meredith Nadeau updated the board on the drafts' progress at their meeting March 13, 2012, the meeting where officials hoped to have draft statements ready to look at.

The working group developed a couple of different versions of a new vision statement, Nadeau said. "We are probably a few words apart really in my estimation," she said. Because they believe the wording is important, they will ask to bring a draft to a future School Board business meeting or a workshop rather than force the process. "We would still like to go out to receive feedback on the draft from all of the stakeholder groups again and try to finalize this prior to the end of the school year certainly," Nadeau said.

The group has spent hours, including time during the February vacation, absorbing input from stakeholder sessions held for faculty, students, School Board members and the community at large. "I would say we've had no difficulty identifying the common themes, the difficulty is in narrowing our word choice to cull out a statement that we think will resonate with all of the stakeholder groups," Nadeau said.

She said she did not want to present a draft vision statement without the context of a mission statement. However, she did say that common themes include a belief in a solid academic foundation; recognizing that success takes many forms; respecting differences among students; and that internal qualities such as confidence, resilience, and critical thinking and problem solving skills are integral to building a successful future.

Nadeau said that copies of all the stakeholder input would accompany the draft vision and mission update when it is rolled out. "We think that will allow other people to see why we moved in the direction that we moved with the vision and mission," she said.

A general discussion of the work on revising the vision and mission statements may be a topic of Nadeau's "Coffee Chat" scheduled for 9-10 a.m. Saturday, March 24, at the Community Center. (directions)