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District Background
Republic R-III School District is a progressive and growing school district that serves the City of Republic, western Springfield, western Battlefield and the surrounding rural community. The school district encompasses parts of Greene County and Christian County as well as bordering eight school districts: Springfield, Nixa, Clever, Billings, Marionville, Mount Vernon, Ash Grove, and Willard. The district has experienced steady growth in enrollment that has exceeded the majority of the surrounding school districts. The Spring 2022 enrollment of over 5,200 students includes an Early Childhood Center, five elementary schools (K-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-12).
The Republic School District continues to receive very high marks from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Typically earning more than 97% of the accreditation points possible from the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) evaluation system. This is the state’s highest level of accreditation. Furthermore, the District was named as an “International Model Professional Learning Community District” from Solution Tree. This is a prestigious honor and one of 25 districts across the nation, and Republic is the first in the state of Missouri to meet these standards. The Board of Education has consistently earned the Board of Education Governance Award from the Missouri School Board Association.
The traditions that are associated with the Republic School District - community, academics, athletics, practical arts and fine arts - are a source of pride for students, community members, and district employees. Republic leadership understands the value of these rich traditions and is dedicated to fostering their growth so it may continue to serve the community’s most valuable resource, its students. We also know the importance of highly effective teaching and learning in order to develop success ready students who are prepared for a variety of career pathways after graduation. As depicted in the mission statement, the reason for the existence of the Republic School District is to prepare each student for future excellence through a safe educational environment.
CSIP Introduction
The comprehensive school improvement plan (CSIP) is a strategic plan to guide district improvement for the next five years. The community priorities, which were identified through community survey responses and data studied via Victoria Bernhardt’s work, will be addressed by three district goals–Academic Success, Culture, and Leadership. Strategies to support community priorities were developed through collaborative efforts of the more than 100 community members who participated on goal teams. These strategies addressed both student and staff needs. Fidelity measures and performance measures were then identified to monitor implementation and performance of each strategy.
The CSIP is a “living document” that may be adjusted following the annual review of fidelity and performance measures. This adjustment allows the CSIP to serve as a driver of continuous improvement so that the Republic School District may remain focused, agile, and accountable in meeting the changing needs of its students and community. The board of education regularly reviews measures contained in the CSIP to make systemic adjustments in resource allocation to support goal attainment.
CSIP Analysis and Development
The non-negotiable tenets that served as the foundation for the planning process were that the plan would:
be community driven
Involve a variety of stakeholders in the creation and monitoring
contain a full description of district strategies
include a concise tool to measure implementation and performance.
Community surveys were utilized to gather responses to establish community priorities. A Steering Committee was then formed to lead the overall process of development. From there, three goal teams were formed consisting of more than 100 community members representing stakeholder groups of parents, certified staff, classified staff, board of education members, and administrators. Goal teams met throughout the 2021-22 school year to disaggregate data, identify prominent community priorities, approve strategies to address community priorities and review fidelity/performance measures. The Board of Education was updated as the process continued throughout the school year. The final CSIP draft was reviewed during a CSIP Goal Team celebration event and was approved the Board of Education in June 2022.
Global Alignment to MSIP 6
Core to Republic’s commitment to excellence for students and staff are the key areas of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), Professional Learning Communities (PLC), and Leader in Me (LIM). You will notice these encircling our goal teams in the visual at right.
Components of these focus areas are intertwined and evident throughout our CSIP. Our Comprehensive School Improvement Plan is also aligned to MSIP 6 indicators and serves as the guiding document for both staff and student success and growth. Our process is overseen by our Board of Education and updates from the Steering Committee are shared regularly.
Key alignment areas with MSIP6 are listed below.
The foundation of our CSIP was based on newly created Mission and Vision Statements. These statements were created through information from a stakeholder survey and then refined by our Key Communicators group.
We have narrowed our goals to three key areas–Academic Success, Culture and Leadership. Aligned to these three areas are performance objectives and correlating strategies. We have 22 focused student strategies and 11 focused staff (both certified and classified members) strategies.
Action steps clearly align to each strategy and are differentiated to meet the needs of different age groups. Each strategy also has defined measurable fidelity and performance measures, including cut scores that will be monitored regularly by Steering Committee/Goal Team Members. More information regarding this can be found on the Monitoring & Responsibilities tab.
District, site and department leaders are all equipped to engage in continuous improvement cycles and engage staff, students, parents and community in developing building level plans (BSIP), Department plans (DIP) and then grade level plans at Elementary (GLIP) and Departmental improvement plans (DIPs) at Secondary. A link to all of these continuous improvement documents can be found on the Aligned Systems tab.
Funding sources and allotments are aligned to the CSIP Goals. More information regarding this can be found on the Funding Sources tab.
Staff and community on-going involvement and feedback are critical for continued growth and success and both stakeholder groups will be involved in our yearly surveys and feedback opportunities. MRA (Measurable Results Assessment) from Leader in Me will be used Spring of 2022 to establish baseline data for areas of Culture and Leadership. As committees are formed to create plans, a variety of stakeholders will be invited to participate.
Academic success has always been a key indicator as we have focused on continuous improvement. Furthermore, we also know that it is important to address all areas that impact learning so we have included both Culture and Leadership goals that allow us to offer high-quality education in safe, caring and thriving environments. This will allow students to develop essential interpersonal and intrapersonal skills alongside academic success to prepare them for future excellence.
With the addition of a new, expanded early childhood center, inclusion of high-quality early learning goals was a priority. Early Childhood is included in many of the district’s key strategies.
We will continue to deepen our implementation of Professional Learning Communities and Response to Intervention which provides a comprehensive multi-tiered system of support.
Each year as the Professional Development Committee plans the PDC Needs Assessment survey, we will utilize the CSIP objectives and strategies as areas of feedback for desired professional learning opportunities, and summer and school year offerings will align with data-driven identified needs.
Closing
The Republic School District has a rich tradition of strong academics and continues to make learning for students and staff the primary focus. The new CSIP will further enable students, staff, and the community to focus on the whole child and the whole staff member. The addition of Culture and Leadership goals to the CSIP will support the district's mission to prepare each student for future excellence through a safe educational environment as well as to attain the vision to be a model community dedicated to education without limitation that empowers learners to create their own success.
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