With all of their goals, as always, centered around meeting the needs of every student, Great Neck School District Board of Education President Barbara Berkowitz presented the 2014-2015 board goals. Berkowitz discussed each of the six goals at the October public action meeting.
Goal number one addresses communications, communicating “effectively” with constituents (parents, faculty and administrators) as well as the “larger community.” The board plans to reach out to share ideas; communicating with the district and the community by conducting an electronic survey. Berkowitz also said that they will also look for ways to increase participation in the budget vote. All of this will be accomplished by offering full support, with translations to Chinese, Mandarin, Spanish and Farci.
Second, the board will continue to support the district’s administrative team as they research and implement programs to permit maximum academic growth for the entire diverse student population and their learning styles.
Third, the board will also continue ongoing budget planning which has provided maximum use of all available funds to meet the educational of all of the students in the district. In addition, the board will continue to develop means to enable district taxpayers to benefit from possible second year tax savings under state law. The board will continue reviewing financial plans.
Goal four is to continue to oversee fairly negotiated collective bargaining agreements that are responsive to changing economic conditions, including the district’s limitations under the tax cap.
Goal five is to ensure that all students graduate high school “college and/or career ready” and by extension, to ensure that all students have the real-life skills for college or work.
The final goal for the year, the sixth goal, is to devise and implement plans to celebrate the school district’s 200th anniversary.
Trustee Donald Ashkenase asked everyone to think about how all of these goals can be achieved. And Berkkowitz noted that the survey will help the board find out “how we are doing” and “how we can do better.”
