• Community Advisory Committee: To begin this phase, we created a Community Advisory Committee to support the strategic plan development.

• • • Committee members community connections

• Strategic Planning Efforts: After the committee was formed, the WestEd team researched exemplar community strategic planning efforts from across the country in districts both similar to Pine Bluff and different, in order to share critical process points and guideposts that would inform PBSD's future efforts. The process points that surfaced in the standout strategic plans that surfaced were:

  • • Fact-gathering (including stakeholder interviews, student, staff, and financial data, finding strengths, opportunities and threats, and identifying values and highest priority needs);

    • Creating a theory of change by establishing vision and setting goals;

    • Selecting actionable strategies based on theory of change;

    • Completing a detailed implementation map for each strategy; and

    • Developing a progress monitoring system to track both implementation and progress towards goals.

• SWOT Analysis: Then, the WestEd team conducted an analysis of the district's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) based on interviews with district staff and students.

• SWOT process and results

• Community Input Survey: Next, we asked for input from community members via a short survey which asked community stakeholders to weigh in on what they value about PBSD and what they wish would change. This survey was the first opportunity in this process for ALL stakeholders to have their voices, ideas, and experience considered as the plan takes shape.

• Information on how the survey was developed

• Letter from Supt. Warren with highlights from the survey results

• Detailed results from the survey

• Vision, Goals, and Values Statements: Based on the survey results, we crafted statements to capture the district and community vision, goals, and values.

• PBSD vision, goals, and values statements.

• Research Best-Practice Strategies: To reach our goals at PBSD, we used the vision, goals, and values statements as a framework to guide our research of evidence-based strategies that have been successful in other similar communities. Twelve potential strategies were initially identified as a starting point for further research by the WestEd team and deliberation among Pine Bluff community members.

• Full list of initially considered strategies

• Labor Market Analysis: WestEd and its subcontractor, APA, looked for evidence-based strategies that would both help PBSD meet their goals and support the economic development of the Pine Bluff community. (These strategies are included in the list of initially considered strategies above). To do this, they:

  • • researched the career-focused course offerings that the district provides (including career and technical education (CTE) coursework, and career guidance);

    • met with local businesses, higher education institutions, and co-ops to learn about the PBSD labor market and workforce needs in the community; and

    • researched other states' and districts' best practices around career pathways, workforce skills, and CTE.

• Community Focus Groups: To get input on which strategies would likely be the most successful in PBSD (and to pare them down to 5), the WestEd team conducted virtual community focus groups (May 2022) and in-person community focus groups (June 2022). A summary of the focus group feedback as well as a high-level summary of potential costs associated with each strategy were presented to the advisory committee. Based on that information, the committee selected the following strategies as the focus for PBSD for the 2022-23 school year: Grow-our-own Great Staff, Elevate Educators, Soft Skills at School, Allies for Achievement, and Inform to Fix it Faster. A high-level summary of those strategies is linked below.

• Virtual focus groups recruitment flier

• Supt. Warren’s recruitment letter

• Focus group feedback and potential costs

• Final selected PBSD strategies at a glance

• Legal Analysis: In order to determine state and federal legal and regulatory allowances for each strategy under consideration, as well as possible funding sources for the strategies, WestEd and APA met with the fiscal and program managers at the Arkansas Department of Education. The information gleaned from this session was used to inform the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) of potential costs for each strategy before the selection of the final strategies by the CAC on June 8, 2022.

Plan objectives:

• Gather input on what will make the plan successful.

• Find ready, willing, and able partners.

Plan objectives:

• Share the plan widely.

• Launch implementation plan and monitoring system.