FHSD Unpacked: Strategies for Success
FHSD Unpacked is our new effort to provide a monthly deep dive into important topics, programs and priorities across Forest Hills School District. By focusing on a single topic each month, we hope to be able to provide families and staff with a more vibrant picture of that month’s particular subject.
Editions of FHSD Unpacked will be sent to all FHSD parents, guardians and staff members near the middle of each month in an email newsletter, after which they will be published on the district website to ensure they are accessible to the general public.
What is the FHSD Strategic Plan?
At the center of the district’s efforts to ensure success for all students lies the FHSD Strategic Plan. This guiding document outlines specific strategies for the school district that are meant to improve upon the long and storied tradition of educational excellence in Forest Hills. By maintaining a concentrated focus on serving students and working tirelessly to improve their educational experience, FHSD produces future-ready graduates who make a positive impact on our community each and every day.
The FHSD Strategic Plan also identifies specific indicators that allow the district to closely monitor these key focus areas and better track the overall progress and success of these efforts. Check out the five key areas below for a comprehensive look at the FHSD Strategic Plan.
Strategy 1: Authentic Engagement
Cultivate and sustain vibrant learning communities for students and staff, dedicated to fostering connections, ownership and continuous growth.
This strategy is closely aligned with the FHSD Culture Blueprint, which prioritizes the values of connections, ownership and growth as ways every member of our school community (students, staff, parents/guardians, neighbors) can actively play a role in making FHSD a truly special place to live, learn and work.
Strategy 1 includes efforts to cultivate engaging educational experiences, develop and enhance our Portrait of a Learner skills and support staff members through a collaborative coaching approach.
Strategy 2: Future-Ready Graduates
Help students become future-ready by integrating academic and realworld experiences, encouraging innovation and emphasizing how learning applies even beyond the classroom.
Students are at the heart of everything we do in Forest Hills, and the driving mission of our school district is to produce responsible citizens and lifelong learners. In other words, individuals who graduate from FHSD will be prepared to follow their passions and achieve personal success.
By providing unmatched academic programming and instructional support, offering opportunities to responsibly explore artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, introducing hands-on career exploration programs and so much more, FHSD continues to find new ways to provide an educational experience that sets students up for long-term success.
Strategy 3: Student Wellness
Build capacity to promote and nurture the social, physical, emotional, behavioral and intellectual well-being for adult and student learners in our community.
In order to allow students to find success academically, it is critical to support their overall wellness at school. Everyone at FHSD is committed to creating a safe, nurturing educational environment for all students, and that involves day-to-day support in our classrooms, organized programs and interventions throughout our schools and partnerships with community organizations to meet the needs of students.
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is one key approach that touches 100% of students who walk through our doors. Tier 1 support systems are designed to establish a foundation for proactive support by educating and empowering all students to play a positive role in their classroom and their school. Strategy 3 also includes a focus on enhancing resources through community partner organizations and providing opportunities for all students to actively engage in co-curricular and extracurricular activities. You can learn more about PBIS in FHSD here, and you can click here to read about two key mental health partners.
Strategy 4: Fiscal Responsibility
Demonstrate responsible, efficient, equitable and transparent stewardship of taxpayer investments.
As a public school district, FHSD deeply understands and appreciates our responsibility to operate efficiently and in a fiscally responsible manner. Each and every decision throughout the school district is made with the best interests of students in mind, while also carefully considering the potential financial costs and impact.
Some key efforts to honor this responsibility include the district’s participation in the Ohio Checkbook, collecting detailed research to inform key decisions and openly communicating important financial information and updates regularly with the community.
By regularly measuring class sizes, overall cost per pupil and the percentage of dollars spent on classroom instruction, the district is able to make properly informed decisions and maintain flexibility to allow operational costs to adjust with our needs. By conducting a comprehensive, full-facility assessment on all district properties, FHSD was able to create a detailed Five-Year Capital Improvement Plan—a document that is regularly updated and helps prioritize necessary repairs and improvements, ensuring every dollar is spent in the most effective and efficient way possible.
Strategy 5: Excellent Communication
Deliver relevant, proactive and timely information through varied communication channels.
There’s a lot of information surrounding each of us every day. Our hope is to provide critical information to the school community that you find helpful and easy to understand, and paint a vibrant picture of this wonderful school district!
FHSD is committed to communicating information in an honest and authentic manner and fostering positive relationships with students, staff, families and community members. Through consistent communication efforts across multiple platforms, channels and mediums, the district truly wants to ensure the community has an accurate picture of everything that is involved in educating students in our community.
The district website, www.foresthills.edu, is consistently updated with important information; official social media accounts provide updates and celebrate student and staff accomplishments across several digital platforms; multiple publications are mailed throughout the year to all addresses in the community; in-person events offer an opportunity to engage with students, staff and families personally; and ParentSquare is the primary tool for direct communication via email, text or phone call.
Measuring Success
Our Mission: To provide educational opportunities that enable our students to acquire the knowledge, skills and personal qualities necessary for responsible citizenship and lifelong learning.
The FHSD Strategic Plan includes specific key indicators that represent data or other measurements that will help inform progress and success. At the end of the day, we hope the success of the school district’s efforts are evident in our students. The district’s success will lay in how well we can live out our mission statement above.
There are several metrics that will be measured or reported throughout the year that FHSD will use to adjust processes and find ways to improve along the way. Some of these include testing results, math and reading diagnostics, feedback survey results, disciplinary data and much more.
Additionally, key outside reports also serve as helpful tools to evaluate and track progress over time. The Ohio School Report Cards were recently released, and FHSD earned a 4.5 star overall rating exceeding state standards. You can find more detailed information about the Ohio School Report Card in this helpful news article. U.S. News and World Report conducts annual rankings of high schools across the state and country. Anderson and Turpin were both ranked in the Top 4.8% of all high schools in Ohio and in the Top 6.3% of schools across the country.
