On Sept. 17, 2019, Greater Clark County Schools Superintendent Mark Laughner presented his five-year strategic plan to the school board. Some of the proposed expenditures for Jeff High include:

• Year one – 1 million dollars for a new football turf, 300 thousand dollars for a new track, and 2.4 million dollars for new football bleachers and press box.
• Year two – 75,000 dollars for Radio and TV lighting
• Year 3 – 2.8 million dollars for new locker rooms and weight rooms and 750,000 for HVAC

Jeffersonville High School Principal Julie Strait believes the bleachers are smart investments, saying, “Take a good look… it would be a much wiser investment, and something we could take pride in if we replace them.” She also was supportive of the new turf saying, “We’re the only high school in 6A without a turf football field. It’s part of pride in your community”

These proposed expenditures were part of a larger plan to support the school district’s goals in four focus areas. 

The first area is climate and culture, and the primary goal being to increase trust and communication. The district proposed many tasks in order to achieve this goal, including releasing a newsletter, providing more professional development, overhauling the website, increasing the marketing budget, and increasing many other forms of communication. 

The second focus area is community partnerships. The first goal is to engage diverse partners. The district hopes to implement a more formal tracking process to acquire more diverse partners that better represent the community. The second goal of this focus area is to make sure that these partnerships have mutually beneficial results. 

The third focus area is financial stability and responsibility. Within this focus area, a primary goal is maximizing and sustaining enrollment. The district proposed many solutions including creating more options for dropouts and homeschool children, adding a bus on Salem Noble Road to stop migration to other districts, transporting more students to their school of choice, redrawing school lines, and sending letters of intent to all 5th-8th grade parents. The second goal being reducing costs of programs and facilities. Some solutions proposed include a restructuring of the preshool system, a changing of instruction with elementary related arts, closing the River Valley Middle School Pool, and a possible retirement buyout. The third goal of this focus area is upgrading and updating facilities. The tasks of this goal include keeping the tax rate steady, implementing a five-year facility plan, reducing energy costs, and completing a five-year facility and demographic study. 

The fourth focus area is quality academics. The first goal is to improve student achievement by increasing the percent of students above their grade level in math and reading. The second goal of this focus area is to reduce the achievement gap in literacy, numeracy and PRIDE by transforming teaching and learning to increase student achievement. 

The school board will meet next on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m.

Written by Maxwell Fisher