Central Bucks Schools will provide all students with the academic and problem-solving skills essential for personal development, responsible citizenship, and life-long learning.
To this end, Central Bucks expects students to acquire and demonstrate a broad base of knowledge and skills as a foundation for continued learning so that they will become:
- Complex thinkers who can reason, reflect, make decisions, and solve problems, supporting and defending their solutions.
- Self-directed learners who can set and prioritize goals, monitor and evaluate progress, use information resources and emerging technologies, and adapt to change.
- Effective and creative communicators who use a variety of skills to express concepts and ideas.
- Informed and responsible citizens who contribute to their community, their country, and their world.
- Collaborative workers who can demonstrate cooperation and leadership within groups to accomplish a common goal.
- Quality producers whose work reflects high standards, originality, and unique abilities.
Vision Statement
Excellence: Committed to It . . . Dedicated to It
Belief Statements
We believe that the Central Bucks School Community:
- Provides a challenging and efficient educational program for all students.
- Respects the uniqueness of each child, develops a sense of belonging, and fosters understanding, tolerance, and life long learning.
- Creates and maintains a safe, respectful, and nurturing learning environment.
- Encourages a supportive and receptive relationship with the greater community.
- Provides for continuous school improvement through shared decision-making and ongoing staff development.
Background
No large organization can move forward in a positive way without long-range planning to guide its actions. Central Bucks is in the fortunate position of having completed two strategic plans under the leadership of Superintendent N. Robert Laws.
The Central Bucks Strategic Plan from 1992-2000 was known as "Charting the Course," a completely blank-slate look at the district's operations under a new superintendent. Encouraging us to use "true North" as our guide, Dr. Laws led the district in its exploration of outcomes-based education, performance assessment, and the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Out of that strategic plan emerged the CB Mission Statement, the CB Essential Learning Student Goals, block scheduling, and the Graduation Project and the Grade 6 and Grade 9 Transition Tasks, among other programs.
The Central Bucks Strategic Plan from 2000-2006 was known as "Staying the Course," a promise to continue in the same academic direction: standards-based courses, a district assessment system incorporating performance tasks and portfolios, and a new remediation program "Academic Skills."
In September 2005, Central Bucks embarked on designing its next Strategic Plan for 2006-2012. This plan is known as "Extending the Course" to continue the metaphor of previous plans. Central Bucks is using the "umbrella" of rigor, relevance, and relationships under which it organizes its other strategic goals: meeting the needs of all students, meeting the needs of the "whole" child beyond academics, preparing students for the workplace of the future, fostering leadership, being innovative users of technology, extending and refining curriculum, instruction, and professional development, and enhancing communication with all community stakeholders.
Participants
The Strategic Planning Steering Committee is a group of fifty-six representatives (administrators, School Board Members, teachers, parents, community members representing each attendance area, business representatives, and students) selected to serve as a direction-setting group. They held two meetings in November 2005 to set direction and two in May 2006 to review action plans. They will meet periodically to review progress on the Strategic Plan.
The Strategic Plan Action Teams included 225 members (administrators, School Board Members, teachers, parents, community members, business representatives, and students), working in the nine goal areas of the Strategic Plan. Each committee was led by co-chairpersons (one teacher and one administrator) and began work at the Kick-Off Event at CB West on February 1, 2006. They met anywhere from 2-4 times a month during February, March, April and early May.