The mission of Southwest Licking Local Schools is to assure that all students are prepared to be lifelong learners who possess a sense of self-worth, critical thinking ability, and necessary life skills enabling them to solve problems, adapt to change, and be productive citizens.
The mission will be accomplished by a skilled and dedicated staff providing personalized instruction with family and community support and participation by students in safe, modern facilities where quality educational and technological materials are the standard.
The mission of SWL schools is lofty and encompasses all the characteristics that are currently in vogue. The issue with a mission statement that is so encompassing is that it does not lend itself to be owned by anyone. An individual teacher, administrator, staff member, parent, or student looks at these two paragraphs and does not know where to start.
So, if SWL schools were to function as envisioned in its mission statement, there are some key commitments that would have to be made and honored.
First, the entire district staff would have to be committed to spending the necessary time to break down the meaning of the mission statement. This does not mean the meaning of the words. The district staff would need to understand what the words in the mission statement mean for our students, staff, and community. For example, what would a productive citizen look like for our community? Once the staff accomplished this task, then the staff would need to spend time engaging our students, parents, and community members on what the mission statement means for our schools. The process of better understanding the mission statement is vital to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page.
The next commitment would have to be reexamining how each grade level and individual course is achieving the ideas represented in the mission statement. District and building staff would need to be committed to evaluating each class based on how the qualities valued in the district mission statement are being instilled into our students. Administrators and staff would have to be committed to abandoning those habits and long-standing traditions including the “favorite” lessons or units that do not help our students meet the expectations in the mission statement. Honoring the commitment will mean some loss of freedom for teachers to do solely what they want. Teachers will have to be willing to evaluate each lesson, unit, activity, and/or assessment based on how it fits into the mission statement. Does the lesson help our students become lifelong learners? If the answer is yes, then the teacher moves on. If the answer is no, the teacher has to be committed to developing better lessons with the mission statement as the focus.
Another commitment would be that all staff would have to truly believe that students can and will meet higher expectations. Unfortunately, some staff let outside influences such as student home life influence their expectations of their students. Obviously, this is not fair to the students, and it undermines the mission statement. The staff has to honor the belief that all students will become lifelong learners and possess critical-thinking abilities. Staff cannot lower their expectations based on what outside influences are doing or have done. All students must be given the same opportunity and expectation to meet high standards. This quite possibly means for some students that more scaffolding has to be provided in order for those same students to meet the high standards, but just because they need more assistance does not mean our expectations should be lowered.
Finally, the district staff must be able to provide viable evidence to all the community stakeholders that the students of the district are meeting the mission. Without evidence, which can be in a variety of formats such as district-created report cards, student community presentations, mentorship programs, and college/career data, the community will not be as willing to be committed to the district through levies and bond issues. Levies and bond issues are unfortunately necessary in order to help the school district continue to prepare students for the future with new/updated facilities and the ever-changing technological and educational needs of the school district.
If these commitments could be tackled by our school district, the goals of our lofty mission statement could be possible. With all the stakeholders’ willingness to commit to these tasks, our students could achieve the mission of SWL schools.