Overview

In March 2019, our Team of 8 – the seven Ector County ISD Trustees plus the Superintendent – began work on a strategic plan to guide the District’s work for the next three-to-five years. Trustees focused their efforts on developing Beliefs and a Vision that will guide the work of the Strategic Planning Team.

Pre-workshop surveys were sent to Trustees, administrators, teachers and students. After reviewing those for common themes and concerns, the group created belief statements and adopted a new vision statement: “OUR students…THE future.” Trustees then outlined several key areas (Climate & Culture, Teaching & Learning, Human Resources, Funding & Finance, Facilities & Infrastructure, and Communication & Community Partnerships) that served as pillars for the next phase in the process.

On April 1-2, a strategic planning team of 66 people took the vision and belief statements developed by the Team of 8 and identified key areas. The group included school district leaders, teachers, business and community members, parents, and students. This two-day retreat took place at Odessa College, and the work built upon the initial strategic planning steps taken by the ECISD Board of Trustees in March.

During the retreat, each member of the group got the chance to talk about the things they see as strengths of the school district, along with things they see as obstacles. All of the committee members received a copy of a recently completed comprehensive needs assessment, which provided 5 years of historical trend data, to use as a reference. A few weeks later Action Teams of 12-15 people formed in order to build action plans related to each of the pillars. The people on these Action Teams were not involved in the work done on April 1-2. The Action Teams reported back to the larger committee in July.

At that time, new Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott Muri joined ECISD and dedicated himself to looking, listening and learning about Odessa, Ector County, and our schools. The earlier work is now being married with the results of Dr. Muri’s 1st 100 Days Report to drive the final phase of the plan’s development.

The Strategic Planning Team met on December 3 and narrowed its focused to improving four key areas: foundational processes, learning, developing people, and supporting our students/families.