North Shore will revisit its strategic plan

School was in session as Chris Zublionis, superintendent of the North Shore School District, got the Board of Education and the community up to speed on the progress of the district’s 2018-23 Strategic Plan at the board meeting on Oct. 13. Zublionis outlined the structure and goals of the plan, and explained that he and Carol Smythe, the assistant superintendent for instruction, had made some suggestions to refine it, pending the board’s approval.
The Strategic Plan has three parts: Teaching and Learning, Equity for All Learners and Social Emotional Learning. Each pillar, as Zublionis described them, was meant to provide an outline for different facets of academic life that will be analyzed, with changes made, if necessary, to improve the student experience.
Teaching and Learning encompasses ways in which the district can enhance students’ learning environment, while the purpose of Equity for All Learners is to ensure that the schools are a safe space for young people to be themselves, free of judgment.
Finally, Social Emotional Learning analyzes the ways in which the district can best nurture students’ social and emotional well-being and maturity, as well as foster communication and decision-making skills. Each part of the plan is overseen by a committee made up of faculty members, students and parents.
Zublionis emphasized that Sea Cliff, like the rest of the United States and the world, had changed drastically since 2018, and that had necessitated an update of the district’s plan. He and other members of the committees had to take into account new mandates and initiatives introduced by the state government, and as the committees learned more through their discussions and research, members realized that some of their initial plans needed reassessing.

“The biggest direct impact was the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact in the very middle of the strategic plan,” Zublionis said, “and that required us to rethink our goals and how we were achieving them, and raised and created new goals.”
Some of what they learned moved the administration to take more immediate action. Their research revealed that student engagement was a concern, so the district responded by promoting it last year as a districtwide goal.
The administration, Zublionis said, had decided to try and clarify the goals of the plan, particularly by asking why and how they planned to enact it. He explained that the ultimate goal had to be to ensure that the district provide students with the best possible scholastic experience.
He also noted that the decision to reassess the Strategic Plan had also come after a review of information presented by the Tri-State Consortium, which conducted a third-party review of the district in the spring of last year. The consortium is an alliance of public school districts, including North Shore, that work together to devise ways to improve students’ educational experience.
The school board expressed its thanks to Zublionis and Smythe for the work they had done on the plan, and asked them several questions in order to clarify some of its details, and the details of the reassessment.
“Thank you very much for the presentation, and all the work that you two have been doing with this,” Rich Galati said. “It’s a tremendous amount of effort. But what’s more mind-boggling is the assessment of all this data.”
Board President Dave Ludmar added his thanks, and acknowledged again the importance of accomplishing the plan’s goals in order to maximize students’ experience.
“I was on those early committees also, and going through those student surveys was eye-opening,” Ludmar said. “I love the connection to student and engagement that you highlighted. That’s what it’s all about, and that’s what drives these actions.”