Salem Schools' Strategic Plan Targets Belonging, Equity, Opportunity

SALEM, MA — The themes of belonging, equity and opportunity are at the core of the new Salem Public Schools strategic plan that Superintendent Steve Zrike unveiled to the School Committee during this week's meeting and to the greater school community as students returned to class for the fall.

Zrike asked the School Committee to work with him to make sure all initiatives and objectives fit into the new plan meant to be a roadmap into the future that guides districtwide efforts to accelerate student learning, implement early literacy curriculum resources, add pre-kindergarten seats, expand the CTE programming, work toward a new high school and change long-held policies and routines.

"As a community, we are ready for a new set of goals and priorities to anchor us in what our students and staff truly need as we strive to build and maintain a best-in-class education system," Zrike wrote in introducing the plan.

Four priorities were identified in the plan: Elevate Learning by building and maintaining a district-wide culture of universally high expectations for every learner; Empower Educators to thrive in a student-center innovative district with room to grow; Center Belonging in a welcoming and supportive school community; Strengthen the Foundation through developing consistent, reliable systems to disrupt inequities and support the work of the district.

The strategic plan includes several benchmarks for achieving each of the priorities.

Elevating learning includes reaching a proficiency level of greater than 60 percent on the MCAS exam across the board, increasing MCAS targets for specific grade levels and subjects where Salem has lagged behind the state average, increasing to 55 percent how multilingual learners fare on the language proficiency exams, increasing the four-year high school graduation rate to 88 percent and increase the confidence index among parents and guardians in their students' learning in Salem Public Schools to 70 percent.

Empowering educator benchmarks include improving the educator retention rate to 85 percent, especially among educators of color, increasing the level of racial and language-diverse staff to 20 percent of teachers and 25 percent of all staff, as well as boosting the teacher belonging and well-being composites and the quality feedback that educators receive.

Center belonging benchmarks include lowering the chronic absenteeism rate to below 18 percent and the dropout rate to below 2 percent, increasing to above 70 percent the measure of students and families who feel valued and developmentally empowered in the schools, and reducing the risk ratio of disciplinary referrals for students of color and with disabilities.

Strengthening the foundation had more abstract metrics for achievement, which Zrike told the School Committee was still being refined but included properly supporting staff with supplies, constructive feedback in a timely manner and cross-department collaboration.

Zrike said the new strategic plan works off and advances the one developed to adapt to the challenges of COVID-19 and was used to plan and budget for the start of the 2023-24 school year.

The School Committee was asked to review the plan before its next meeting and develop a schedule of updates that will allow Zrike, the administration and the elected officials to review and determine progress toward the objectives.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)