After weeks of gathering public feedback, the Woodland Park District RE-2 board of education discussed its next steps towards developing a strategic plan for the district during their regular meeting April 8.

The board agreed in developing a new plan during their annual retreat in January to define the school district’s priorities and goals for the years ahead. This work began with the development and distribution of a public survey last month to learn what’s most important to the community from their district.

According to board president Keegan Barkley, they received 67 responses, mostly positive, with “operational integrity” and “financial policy” being named the biggest priorities in the district.

Other priorities mentioned were safety, academic excellence, talent recruitment and student and community engagement.

The board and district leadership are planning a “State of the District” assembly in the high school auditorium on April 28 to act as a sort of town hall for the community. The board also discussed possibly adopting a mission statement for the school district, to likely reflect these values and overall purpose. The hope is for this statement to be finalized in time for the assembly.

Board director Kassidi Gilgenast added that the upcoming presentation could serve as an additional way to reach and hear from community members that the survey did not.

“I really don’t think that the community at large, despite our best efforts, has a very clear picture and, like, the opportunity to provide feedback,” she said. “And this could be our last chance to really do that in an open conversation before we finalize and move.”

In the meantime, other board work recently conducted included the first meeting of a sustainable funding taskforce to explore various funding mechanisms for the district and conducted a meeting last week with the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers to improve relations and operations with its charter school, Merit Academy.

For the latter, board members noted how they were currently missing much of what the association considers best practices. To visualize what might be missing currently, board member Laura Gordon compared the most recent contract the district signed with Merit to the attachments from its first contract, both coming out to an equal size and length.

She noted that many of the conditions like waivers, recruitment and enrollment plans and district services contract aren’t included in the current.

Possibilities for the district going forward included outside consultation from an attorney familiar with charter school contracts and hiring a charter liaison.

Later in the meeting, after selecting Ginger Slocum as the district’s next superintendent last month, the board approved her contract Wednesday night which board members agreed was in need of revisions.