DALTON, Ga. — A Dalton Board of Education with two new members is working to develop a new strategic plan for the school system. 

During a called work session last week at City Hall, board members reviewed an initial draft of ideas and goals set forth by the board members and the administration. There was no action taken during the hour-long session. Returning board members Tulley Johnson, Pablo Perez and Chairman Rick Fromm were joined by new board members Matt Evans and Palmer Griffin.

Interim Superintendent Don Amonett said it will be beneficial to have something in writing that everyone can hold as an outline of goals and the actions that will be taken.

“In the past, we have had a strategic planning process and everything that we are talking about, we have been doing, but we don’t have it written down somewhere where we can show people,” said Amonett, who has been in the superintendent’s role since Jim Hawkins stepped down last summer. “When the community comes up and says, ‘What do you think about this?’ we can tell them, but we can’t show them something. That’s what this board wants us to have — to have some documents we can show the community and community leaders this is the direction we are going instead of just talking about it.

“But on the opposite end also, it’s going to have some specific things that we use to document how we’re progressing in those areas. We do that in-house, but we don’t have a specific statement that says this is what we are going to use and this is what we are going to tell the folks.”

The draft version of the plan has four main priorities — college and career readiness; recruitment and retention of quality professionals; operational excellence (facilities and resources) and communication and engagement of stakeholders. Each has strategies and actions identified. Recruitment and retention of “highly-effective staff” includes calling for a multi-year plan to improve salaries and compensation as well as the reduction of class sizes. 

Fromm said the new strategic vision is little changed from the historic goals of the system. 

“Overall, I think our strategic vision is continuing on,” Fromm said. “We want to continue the excellence of Dalton Public Schools. The people who came before us laid out a great vision and we still want to shoot for that. One of the things that I think this board is willing to look at a little bit more as we add back to the budget and have some resources and some fund balances to maybe tackle some of those issues in the classroom we haven’t been able to do, such as hiring some teachers and decreasing the student-teacher ratio even more. I think that would be a really good step toward helping student achievement.”

Fromm also said having a unified vision from the board enables the administration to more effectively pursue those goals. 

“I think it is a great idea to go ahead and outline those things before the budget retreat actually begins,” Fromm said. “It will save us some time then, but it also will allow the staff to prepare a lot of the information that we need to kind of inform the decisions. I think they’ve got a better understanding of what this board is interested in and a lot of the stuff we have been working on. We obviously always want to continue to improve and have a continuous improvement plan.”

The board members will meet with administration staff on Friday for the budget retreat at the annex professional learning lab. The next school board meeting is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 12. 

Earlier, in a joint meeting of the City Council, the Dalton Building Authority and the school board, the three governing bodies approved the issuing of bonds for $14.3 million for renovations at Brookwood, City Park and Roan elementary schools and Dalton High School. The money will also be used for land, technology and equipment purchases. 

The interest rate on the bonds will be 1.8 percent, according to Jim Woodward, a bond attorney from the firm of Gray, Pannell & Woodward.