In order to be successful in any venture, there has to be a plan, and Riverside School District 96 will work with Educational Leadership Solutions to head up its strategic planning process in 2026.
The district board of education on Dec. 17 approved a $19,500 proposal from Educational Leadership Solutions to facilitate a planning process that will cover roughly the next five years.
Joliet-based Educational Leadership Solutions was chosen over Catalyst for Educational Change, which had launched the district’s original strategic plan in the 2020-21 school year. Due to changes in that organization’s leadership, Educational Leadership Solutions stepped in and has been facilitating a series of workshops for District 96 each year called Living the Plan, a process designed to make sure the plan is actionable instead of merely a document, said superintendent Dr. Martha Ryan-Toye.
“They’ve been working with us directly to make sure we are implementing our plan with measurable outcomes and making sure we’re making changes,” Ryan-Toye said. “They are taking a team involved with District 96 and they gather feedback, sift through it all, and formulate a plan that is digestable and doable. We’re doing the plan with their coordination and facilitation.”
Ryan-Toye said Educational Leadership Solutions will work with the district’s strategic planning team for six to eight sessions this year. The district team will include administrators, board members, staff, parents and community members.
Dr. Gary Zabilka is lead consultant and partner at Educational Leadership Solutions and said the value of a strategic plan is direction and alignment throughout the district to meet specific goals in coming years.
“Without a plan, districts fall into the whims of what’s happening today, what’s the biggest concern,” Zabilka said. “When one has a strategic plan, you have strategic targets you want to focus on for the next three to five years.”
The first step, according to Zabilka, will be a survey targeted to parents and community members that will ask questions about everything from academics and facilities maintenance to district finances.
“Part of the work we’ve done with District 96 in the last couple of years is we meet a couple of times a year, and we develop action plans for target areas, specific goals, and how they are going to reach these targets, (and) what’s going to be used to measure that success, so this becomes embedded in the process once the large target areas are identified,” said Zabilka, the former superintendent of Morton Grove School District 70.
“We’ve very transparent,” he said. “We’ll review their current plan, identify what is your district mission, as well as a vision for the district. We do that with this large group of 30 to 50 people, (with) four to six major target areas that we want to determine through this large group.”
After that, Zabilka will work with administration to determine who will be charged with what focus areas.
Another key reason for strategic planning is that the years seem to slip by fast, he said.
“Terribly fast,” he said. “Once 2025 sounded like a long time ago. This new plan will be in place until 2030 or 2031 and believe it or not, it will go as quickly as 2020 to 2025. The advantage of a strategic plan is to keep things moving at a reasonable pace.”
