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Members of the Coffee County Schools Board of Education officially began work on a new goal-oriented five-year plan during a meeting Monday, Aug. 21.

During the first of several scheduled meetings, board members brought their ideas to the table to discuss areas where the county school system is doing well as well as areas that could use some improvement in addition to reviewing the district’s mission and vision statements.

Board member Kathy Rose, who is spearheading the project, asked her fellow board members to complete a little homework for the meeting.

“The first thing that I have asked you to do in preparing for visioning was to think about core values, core values for Coffee County schools,” she said. “We have to talk about where we are right now. What one board member values may not be the same thing (as another member).”

Jones asked board members to name off what they consider to be core values of the school system.

Board member Gary Cordell named off “teachers and staff commitment to excellence,” while board member Robert Gilley said “accountability.”

Board member Brent Parsley echoed Cordell’s sentiment of commitment, while Board member Freda K. Jones said her core values include, “community involvement and appreciation for public education.”

“I see a pattern coming out here,” Rose said. “We are talking about commitment.”

Board members also spent a few minutes examining the district’s existing mission and vision statements and how they could be improved.

“A vision statement is what do we want to be,” Rose said. “What do we see ourselves as being. That is our vision. Our mission, what are we going to do to get there.”

Rose said in drafting a new five-year plan, it is important board members utilize SMART goals- specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.

“When we are looking at this five-year plan, when we are looking at mission statement when we are looking at vision statements, we want to look at things that we can get accomplished while we are still living, not 40 years down the road,” she said.

Board member Thomas Ballard said he would like to see everything boiled down to goals and how those can be tracked for progress.

“I am a numbers guy,” he said. “We need to boil everything down to the goals and we need to do SMART goals, but the “M” in SMART goals is measurable, so you take the goals and you measure performance using (key performance indicators).

“You need to have the SMART goals and you need to have KPI’s to measure the performance, that is really what I would like to see everything boil down to is we have our SMART goals, but them we have some KPIs in place that we track those things and the board gets to see those things on a regular basis to measure performance,” Ballard said.

Gilley said everything being discussed during the meeting was a “revolving door” that connects to the next part.

“If we just maybe look at this the opposite way, and identify something we commonly agree on that might be the break in that chain, I think we stand a better change of more quickly hitching everything back together and creating that generalized plan,” he said. “I don’t think there is anybody in this room that is not on task at just about the same points if you really look at the broad spectrum of everything we have touched at.”

Jones said she believes the district’s mission and vision statements would be a good place to start in developing the new plan.

“I would like to see us come up with a commonsense mission statement,” she said. “I think that is the beginning point, something that is not just words…I think we can do that…I do think it is important to start out with something that is doable and that everyone understands.”