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Brownsville Independent School District takes a very collaborative approach to strategic planning. The District Improvement Plan is developed by the District Educational Improvement Council (DEIC), which includes representatives from every school in the district. The planning process centers on creating student achievement goals that map to the district’s mission statement and creating the action plans that will allow schools to meet their ambitious goals.

1 – District Mission and Goals One-page description of Brownsville’s mission and goals.
What to Notice Brownsville’s mission statement explicitly targets higher education and responsible citizenry as student-oriented goals. In addition, the district provides specific goals that apply to key central office departments: curriculum and instruction, personnel, facilities and finance. These functional goals address the role of the district in creating healthy, high-functioning skills that offer students the best chance to succeed.	Questions to Ask How and when was the mission statement developed? Did it come from the board or from management? What was the process for articulating the mission and collecting input from stakeholders? How did the functional goals come to be? How did each of the four key district departments draft their own goals? How would you translate these qualitative goals into measurable objectives? How is progress toward goals tracked? How often do goals change?
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2 – Curriculum and Instruction Action Plan for Board’s Goals and Objectives This is a supplement to the state-required “District Improvement Plan.” The document describes specific objectives and action plans tied to the district’s core goal around curriculum and instruction.
What to Notice In the core area of curriculum and instruction, Brownsville has developed concrete objectives and action plans that address the board’s goal for curriculum and instruction. On page 69, notice that the seven objectives describe how the curriculum and instruction department hopes to achieve this goal. Each objective is further defined through a series of action steps that indicate the persons responsible, resources needed, timeline, and evaluation method.	Questions to Ask How did the district go about translating the board’s curriculum and instruction goal into concrete objectives? How did the board participate in this process, or did the superintendent’s team take responsibility for this? How widely is the document used? How are individual teachers and principals made aware of the academic goals and action steps listed in the plan? Who tracks progress against the action plans?
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