From Superintendent Jay Slade:
Traci Sand has been and continues to be an instrumental staff member and leader at Dakota Prairie School District. The evidence for this statement stems from her earliest teacher evaluation in 1996 where Principal Forde stated Mrs. Sand “always keeps her students’ best interest in mind” to her leadership over these past two Cognia Review cycles. During the past 6 months or so, you have heard much discussion about the Cognia Review and that it is coming. Now that it complete and early indicators are we did quite well, I wanted you to hear from the person who is crucial is our “doing great” with this entire process and some specifics about the Cognia process: Planning for the future is an essential process for any organization. Planning helps the organization embrace inevitable change, stay current, relevant, and proactive versus reactive or stagnant.
Dakota Prairie School District has been, and continues to be, committed to making data driven decisions to ensure continuous improvement and accountability. A leadership team has been established to help in the process of not only planning, but also using best practices towards information gained from data collection. For Dakota Prairie, our Leadership Team consists of Clay Johnson, Jackie Bye, Jay Slade, and Traci Sand. Led by the leadership team, the district engages in a comprehensive process of evaluation and accreditation. The state of North Dakota requires all public school districts to use the Cognia School Improvement and Accreditation Model to evaluate, give recommendations, and ultimately grant accreditation. Cognia uses three standards and corresponding indicators to assess overall school district performance. Those standards are: Leadership Capacity, Learning Capacity, Resource Capacity. Additionally, districts are required to create a living document that focuses on communication of goals, priorities needed to achieve these goals, achievements, and ways to measure process called a Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan outlines Dakota Prairie’s mission, vision, values, and initiatives over a 3 to 5 year period. Plans are required to be submitted to the state on a yearly basis. With recent changes, an evaluation team created by Cognia does an extensive review of the district every 6 years. The purpose of this review is to rate, provide feedback, and ultimately approve/recommend accreditation to the state of North Dakota. Prior to this visit, the leadership team is required to submit data and narratives from analyzed surveys, student performance, and stakeholder engagement.
Dakota Prairie Schools completed this process in mid-November and we are now waiting to hear our official results. At the time of the review, we received very high marks from the Cognia visitation team, especially regarding student’s engagement and us creating a healthy and rewarding educational environment. Once we receive the final results, we will then meet to go over the information and form another Strategic Plan we can implement.