Great schools and great communities simply go together. One of the essential elements of a successful school district is a vibrant and ongoing relationship with the citizens we serve.</p><p>It is our responsibility to not only provide an outstanding education for our students, but to remain closely connected to the communities we serve and the people who make up those communities. Community engagement and effective communication are an important aspect of any great school system, but even more so during the process of developing a strategic plan.</p><p>Next month, the Monroe County School District will begin the process of developing our five-year strategic plan. This planning process will be referred to as Charting the Course: Excellence in the Monroe County Schools. This will be a very involved and intensive process and will include many people as both community members and employees.</p><p>Let me briefly outline the overall stages of this process.</p><p>During March I will conduct six to seven community engagement sessions throughout Monroe County. Each of these sessions will be hosted by a community member, held in an appropriate school or community facility, and will be about 90 minutes long. I will briefly outline some of the strengths and challenges of the Monroe County schools, but will spend the majority of the time listening to our community members on what they want to see in their Monroe County schools.</p><p>Dates, times and locations can be found at www.keysschools.com. Information and input collected from these community engagement sessions will be summarized and presented to the district's strategic planning team during our sessions in April.</p><p>I am looking for 25 community members from across Monroe County to be part of this important team effort. This will be a selected group of individuals, 25 community members and 25 employees, to reflect the geographic and other rich diversity of the Monroe County schools. If you are interested in serving, you may complete an application online at www.keysschools.com/plan or at any of the community engagement sessions.</p><p>The strategic planning team will meet for a total of 12 hours during sessions on April 16 and 20. During this time, they will develop four to six large strategic objectives for Monroe County schools over the next five years. This work will then be passed along to action teams, those responsible for identifying the specific steps, actions, results and measurable outcomes to be established in the first 12 to 18 months of the strategic plan, all of which must be completed before the plan comes back before the School Board in June.</p><p>There's lots of work to be done. I need your help.</p><p>Obviously, a plan by itself is of no real value. The value comes in the deployment and actions with expected outcomes that are implemented in accordance with the action plans and aligned with the strategic plan.</p><p>The 2013-14 school year will be Year 1 of implementation of our strategic plan. It will be a year of transition as we seek to align our efforts and resources with the identified priorities of our strategic plan. While there are sure to be some new initiatives and refinement of ongoing efforts, there will also be the challenge of eliminating ineffective practices and efforts as well.</p><p>In the second half of the 2013-14 school year we will have our first opportunity to truly use the strategic plan to formulate our budget and planning for the 2014-15 school year. Resourcing a strategic plan is a critical stage in the process.</p><p>We will begin with the analysis and allocation of existing resources to align with the identified actions of the strategic plan, but it is also likely and foreseeable that we may need additional resources from our communities to support the efforts they have identified.</p><p>While it is still too early to say for sure, I am quite confident that the Monroe County School District, with proper approval and authority of the School Board, may need to ask our communities to provide some additional resources to fully meet the priorities of our strategic plan. By the time this might happen, we would hope to have restored the trust and confidence of our communities so that we can once again proclaim that great schools and great communities simply go together.</p><p>This is your call to action. Please join me in charting the course to excellence in Monroe County schools in whatever way you can.</p><p><I>Mark Porter was hired last year as Monroe County School District superintendent.