Sheridan looks toward future with strategic plan
SHERIDAN—The Sheridan school board held its monthly meeting on Tuesday, October 9, and focused particularly on the importance of creating its strategic plan and a commercial energy renewal for the next year.
Strategic plan
Superintendent Mike Wetherbee noted that establishing a strategic plan will allow the progress that’s already been made in the district to be quantified, as well as creating a roadmap for future projects and goals in Sheridan.
“We’ve done a lot of stuff since I’ve been here,” Wetherbee said. “It’s time to get that down officially on paper. I think it needs to be written.”
The plan would create a concrete structure for one-, three- and five-year projections for Sheridan School District, and will focus on four categories: facilities, curriculum, technology and safety. One of its important roles, Wetherbee said, would be looking beyond the scope of the board itself, opening the operations of the district up for community input.
Three board members volunteered to be members of a committee to get the ball rolling on Sheridan’s strategic plan: Russ Hamilton, Therese Sutton and Klint Todd. That committee will also likely include at least one Sheridan faculty member, Wetherbee as superintendent and one or more community members.
Commercial energy
Another major topic of discussion was the district’s contract renewal with Commercial Energy. The company provided usage reports and plan options to the district, which included both one- and two-year contracts that offered both fixed-rate energy prices and collared prices that could fluctuate depending on nationwide trends in natural gas prices.
The board compared energy prices from the past several years in order to decide how to proceed and ended up straying from their previous contract’s two-year, fixed-price plan to a one-year, collared-price option. While energy prices could swing upward for the district with that option, the data for the past several years showed that prices have not fluctuated enough to warrant concern that they would do so within the next year.
The board voted 3-2 for the new plan of action, prompting Wetherbee to note that it was one of only a handful of non-unanimous decisions in his tenure as superintendent.
The school board also:
• Got an update on student enrollment, measured every October and February. Sheridan currently has 59 enrolled high school students and 119 students in grades K-8. The Office of Public Instruction will use those numbers to plan next year’s budget for each school.
• Approved the April 13 - 20, 2019 dates for the senior class’s annual Washington D.C. trip for students to learn government.
• Approved Ben Holland as head junior high boys’ basketball coach and Susan Leroux as a substitute bus driver.
• Planned to create a committee comprising both Sheridan and Twin Bridges representatives to consider a future cooperative agreement between the two schools for junior high athletic programs.
Sheridan’s next school board meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 13.