TORRINGTON – Goshen County School District Board of Trustees met Monday, February 5 at the central administration building in Torrington to attend a training session from the Wyoming School Board Association. Trustees Carlos Saucedo, Wade Phipps, Dylan Hager, Sarah Chaires, and Michael Sussex were present along with superintendent Ryan Kramer, and Kevin Derby, director of curriculum and instruction. Trustee Lena Moeller appeared via zoom.

Michael Sussex, board chairman, called the meeting to order shortly after 6 p.m. followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. A motion was made to approve the agenda which passed. 

The board then moved on to the continuation of district strategic planning with Brian Farmer, Executive Director of the Wyoming School Board Association. 

Farmer provided the trustees with a short recap from the last training session where the board carefully examined parts of the vision and mission statements as well as the districts goals. 

“As we go through tonight, there’s a couple of things we are going to talk about to really get us in focus to our goal of having something that we can share with the district to get their feedback to see if they feel we are on target with this strategic plan,” Farmer addressed the board.

Farmer handed the board members a copy of the current mission, values and beliefs and a copy of the most recent strategic planning. 

“What we are looking at is starting now our strategic plan by updating some of that thinking,” Farmer explained. “I just want to review this first, the proposed mission statement, and the proposed core values. Take a look, if you will, at that proposed vision statement. Remember when we said the vision is really that picture of what we want the district to be like. That future-looking ideal state of the district,” he continued. 

The trustees took some time to reflect on the mission statement and the prior work session. 

“Having had a little bit of time now, to think about that, do we need to tweak it anymore or are we pretty good with this,” Farmer asked the trustees. “Pretty good meaning are we ready to put this out to our community for their feedback.”

The trustees expressed some concerns and suggested a few minor changes of verbiage for the mission statement. 

“Several things that we wanted to include in this (the mission statement), we had a lot of debate about whether it was bragging to say we were the premier district in the region, but we said that is what we inspire to be,” Farmer said. 

The trustees then discussed the core vision statement, taking turns reading the prior work sessions progress. 

“We, in a few places, tweaked the words, but really ‘is it best for kids’ being kind of a driving force,” Farmer explained. “Everything we do in this district we want it to be what’s best for our students. Then that collaboration, that working together with all stakeholders, that communication being open and honest dialogue that is two-way. Anything we need to tweak in the first three,” Farmer asked the trustees. 

After a few small changes to the wording of the vision statement, the trustees moved on with the discussion. 

“Our first half of what we want to share with our community, we’re done. Our second half now comes from the work we did last time when we talked about different operational areas of the district, place we saw a strengths and places where there are opportunities for growth,” Farmer expressed. 

The planning session continued on throughout the evening and it was adjourned shortly before 8 p.m.