Multi-Year Plan 2016-2020

Home/Our Board/Multi-Year Plan 2016-2020/

The Board’s Multi-Year Plan is its strategic plan which is executed for a four year period. The purpose of the Multi-Year Plan is to set direction, and prioritize the collective actions of all stakeholders to ensure our efforts as an organization are aligned and coordinated to support the more than 60,000 students and 9,000 staff across the Halton District School Board. The Education Act, section 169.1 outlines the requirements for all Ontario school boards to have a multi-year plan in place.

Multi-Year Plan Brochure image The Multi-Year Plan is also available in pdf format.

multiyear plan video poster View our Multi-Year Plan video.

Introduction

A Board’s strategic plan is developed keeping Ontario Ministry priorities and direction in mind, as well as Board specific strengths, priorities and areas of growth. For example, the Ministry document “Achieving Excellence” sets a broad context provincially and outlines several areas that Boards are expected to focus on including: achieving excellence, ensuring equity, promoting well-being and enhancing public confidence. Specific to student achievement, the Ministry has been clear about several defined areas that require school board attention, including achievement in mathematics, special education, equity and well-being and students in applied pathways in secondary schools. These provincially defined priorities are considered with local board priorities and areas of need in the creation of a board’s strategic plan.

The plan, once developed, should influence Board decisions on budgets, the allocation of resources and day-to-day operations. While the plan may include several targeted areas e.g. facilities, human resources, budget and finance, health and safety, the constant challenge is to ensure that each area of focus has a direct impact on our core work of improving student achievement and well-being. The plan acts as a road map over the 4 year window, and should be reviewed, discussed and communicated on an ongoing basis, as it drives the daily work of the Board. Annual operational plans are developed each year, aligned with the multi-year plan and each year progress is assessed and strategies modified as needed to ensure continued progress in the identified areas.

The Director and Chair of the Board initiated the development of this plan in January, 2016. The development of the plan occurred with the acknowledgement of the successes and accomplishments that occurred through the Multi-Year Plan 2012-2016, while looking forward to priority areas and changing needs. The process occurred over several months with the goal to involve a variety of stakeholders so that a diverse range of ideas could be considered. This document provides an overview of the process for development of the plan, key components of the plan and why the plan is important for the work we do as a learning organization.

Multi-Year Plan Development

The Multi-Year Plan is the result of a collaborative effort between Trustees and senior administration. A facilitator was hired to support the multi-year plan development process with this group. The Director, Chair of the Board and Facilitator acted as a Steering Team for the process and worked closely to direct the larger working team of trustees and senior administration.

The process was initiated with a facilitated session on the purpose and key components of a multi-year planning process, and the suggested process for development. This resulted in a shared understanding by Trustees and senior administration and a tentative timeline for the work being undertaken.

As a follow up to this session, a gap analysis was performed with this same working group. The gap analysis examined the previous multi-year plan goals and a variety of data sources to determine if the board had met its targets for these goals, whether they were still priority areas, and what new priority areas had surfaced. Each goal and the available data were examined to determine if we had met our targets and whether the goal area remained a priority. Ideas and suggestions were captured and recorded from the group.

Feedback was sought from a larger group of stakeholders. Two facilitated consultation session occurred with a variety of stakeholders, both from within the Halton District School Board and outside community partners as well. This occurred early in the process to review successes and areas for growth in our previous Multi-Year Plan and receive input and suggestions about what should be considered priority areas for inclusion in the new Multi-Year Plan. The list of stakeholder groups can be found in the Multi-Year Plan Development Timeline table at the end of this section.

Mission, Vision and Values

Another smaller team was established early in the process consisting of the Director, Facilitator and a group of Trustees and Superintendents to work on the Mission and Vision. This team was tasked with bringing a draft Mission and Vision statement back to the working group for feedback. This work was initiated by critiquing the Mission and Vision statement from the previous multi-year plan using the feedback received from the stakeholder sessions. This small team worked over two sessions to create draft Mission and Vision statements which were subsequently shared with the larger working group.

Once the working group had an opportunity to discuss and make some minor revisions, the Mission and Vision statements were finalized. The working group then moved on with the task of the analysis and discussion of our values statements from our last Multi-year plan. A decision point for the group was whether to include value or action statements as were included in our previous plan or whether to simplify this section. After considerable discussion, the decision was made to prioritize and just list the key values in alphabetical order.

The product at this point in the process was:

Mission: Together we inspire every student to learn, grow and succeed
Vision: Every student will explore and enhance their potential, passions and strengths to thrive as contributing global citizens
Values: Accountability, Collaboration, Creativity, Empathy, Equity, Integrity

Goals

Based on the stakeholder feedback, Ministry priorities for school boards and priority areas established for the Halton District School Board, general priority areas were established. It was the intent of the working group to select a small number of priority areas rather than a long list. These priority areas were eventually written as Goal Statements. In the past the HDSB strategic goals were categorized in three areas: Students, Staff and System. This method was agreed to again with an additional sub-categorization of Engagement and Achievement, Stewardship and Resources and Equity and Well-being. This categorization scheme resulted in a matrix of goals as shown in the following table:

Engagement and Achievement

Students	Every student will be intellectually engaged in their learning and socially engaged in their school.
Staff	All staff will contribute to collaborative and inclusive learning environments to enhance innovative practices and build a strong learning organization.
System	We will engage stakeholders using strategies to build relationships and enhance confidence in our public education system.

Stewardship and Resources

Students	Every student will be supported by evidence-based instructional strategies, resources and interventions differentiated to their strengths and needs.
Staff	All staff will use data to inform actions, validate decision-making and allocate resources.
System	We will provide and maintain facilities that are safe, accessible and engaging learning environments. We will optimize resources and technology through innovative and creative opportunities and partnerships.

Equity & Well-Being

Students	Every student will learn in an inclusive and caring environment that promotes their well-being. Every student will learn in a respectful culture of high expectations that values diversity, and will see themselves reflected in their learning.
Staff	All staff will engage in learning, and model a culture of equity and inclusion in support of student well-being.
System	We will advance a culture of respect for all students, staff, families and community. We will use innovative approaches to student accommodation that reflect the changing needs within our communities.

Targets

Trustees approved the Multi-Year Plan goals a Board Meeting on June 1, 2016. Senior Administration then went to work determining targets for measuring success in each goal area. There was considerable discussion about the targets, what exactly would they measure and how this measurement supported each identified goal area. Targets were selected that were measureable. In most cases, this was done with consideration of data sources already available to the Halton District School Board. There were other areas identified where the Board does not currently have access to data to measure progress and so a plan was created to ensure data would be collected through a Stakeholder Engagement process. This process would seek input form students, staff, parents and community in a variety of identified areas. This process would allow the board to measure progress in several areas that were previously not possible. After consultation with the Board of trustees, targets were finalized as shown in the Multi-Year Plan.

Timeline

The Multi-Year Plan guides our work over the next 4 years. Each year an Operational Plan is developed by staff which is a one year snapshot of the Multi-Year Plan. The Operational Plan outlines key annual strategies and budget to move the Board closer to achieving its 4 year goals. These plans are communicated broadly across the system and it remains a focus for Board leadership to ensure that we continue to communicate, and reference the priority work we have established through this process so that employees across the system as well as our broader school board community are aware of our core work and priorities. To that end, each year, there are several opportunities for Board of Trustees to be updated on progress of the Multi-Year plan through Operational Plan updates and the Director’s Annual Report that come to the Board.

The following table shows the timeline for the Multi-Year Plan development

Date	Who's Involved	Action
Jan 13, 2016	Committee of the Whole?	Description of Multi Year Planning Process with facilitator Education Act Section 169.1 Discussion to understand Halton process, establish working structure Reviewed HDSB Mission and Values statements
Jan 18, 2016	Administrative Council	Identified the list of stakeholders to be invited to the first stakeholder consultation session
Jan 26, 2016	Director’s Office	Invitations sent to stakeholders: Trustees, Student Trustees Senior administration, SEAC, PIC, HEPA, HSPA, All Union groups, School Programs Department (one elementary and one secondary), Special Education Department senior staff member, School Programs senior staff member, Corporate Senior Managers, HLF, HIEC, Centre for Skills, IPLs, Manager of Health and Safety, Interfaith Council of Halton, Community Member Six Nations, Equity & Inclusive Education, Our Kids Network, Halton Region Children’s Services, ROCK, Halton Food For Thought:
Feb 1, 2016	Strategic Planning Session with Stakeholders	In this session, the process was introduced including the legislation governing strategic planning in school boards. The previous multi-year plan mission, vision and values was critiqued and a gap analysis was conducted.
Feb 9, 2016	Strategic Planning Session with Stakeholders	This was a repeat session with those who were unable to attend Feb 1st session
Mar 8, 2016	Working Team	Gap Analysis Session
Mar 8, 21, 2016	Small Group Writing Team (Director, Trustees, Senior Admin)	A small group was established as a writing team to take feedback on Mission, Vision and Values and craft a draft Mission, Vision, Values to report back to larger group
Mar 24, 2016	Trustees	Communication Sent to all Trustees to update them on the work of the Writing Team
Mar 31, 2016	Writing Team	Multi-Year Plan draft Mission, Vision and Values to the Board for information
Apr 10,11, 2016	Full Day	Full Day Workshops - April 10 at J. W. Singleton; April 11 at MMR in the library Challenges and Threats Validation of Mission, Vision, Values Had not fine tuned Values - students or with others?
April 12, 2016	SAM	Multi Year Plan Update on development
May 16, 2016	MYP Steering Committee– Trustees and Admin	MYP Follow up with full group Benefits of MYP discussed Mission and Values statements validated
May 24, 2016	MYP session at AC/MYP session with Trustees	Multi-Year Plan Goals
May 26, 2016	Steering Committee – (admin and Trustees) at Dr. Frank J. Hayden	Final Review of Values Recommendation to board to approve the Mission, Vision and Values as well as goals in the 16-17 Multi Year Plan (report 16102)
June 1, 2016	Board Meeting	MYP mission, vision, values and goals shared with Board
June 6, 2016	Admin Council	Trustee comments were reviewed by Admin Council
June 15, 2016	Board Meeting	MYP mission, vision, values and goals approved by Board
June 21, 2016	Admin Council	Multi Year Plan / Targets Discussion at Admin Council
Aug 23, 2016	System Leaders Conference	MYP One pager with mission, vision, values and goals handed out and presented at System Leaders summer conference
Sept	Admin Council	Development of Targets
Sept 26, 2016	Admin Council	Review MYP Targets and plan timeline for strategies for Operational Pla
Oct	Admin Council	Development of strategies for Operational Plan
Oct	Admin Council	Finalize Budget for Operational Plan
Nov 2, 2016	Board Meeting	Multi Year Plan with Targets presented 2016/17 Operational Plan presented and approved

Board Office

Halton District School Board
J.W. Singleton Education Centre
2050 Guelph Line
Burlington, Ontario, L7P 5A8

Numbers

Phone: 905-335-3663
Fax: 905-335-9802

Links

Email Us

Multi-Year Plan 2016-2020

​Date

​Who's Involved

​Action

Date

Who's Involved

Action