Nov. 16, 2022

As the New Hartford Central School District continues to gather information to develop a strategic plan, the district is seeking more input from its stakeholders to better define academic excellence. 

“Academic excellence can mean different things to different people,” Superintendent Cosimo Tangorra, Jr. said. “We want to make sure that we are accurately reflecting in our plan what is important to our students and their families, our staff and our greater community.”

The district has launched a ThoughtExchange that will be open through Nov. 25 that asks for feedback on key indicators of academic success. This is a follow up to a previous ThoughtExchange from which district officials identified potential strategic plan focus areas, including academics, communication, school environment and facilities.

ThoughtExchange is an online communication tool that allows the district to ask participants to respond to one open-ended question and then consider and assign stars to the ideas shared by others. Thoughts and stars are confidential, and participants are encouraged to return to the exchange often to star new ideas that are shared. 

District officials anticipate completing a five-year strategic plan this winter. The final plan will serve as a guide for the school board in making decisions that align with the priorities identified by the district’s many stakeholders. The plan will also support the district’s new mission, vision and goals, which the board approved in February. 

Summary reports of the two previous exchanges are available online. Both exchanges posed the same question to two separate groups: one made up of district staff and the other of parents, students, community members, business owners and higher education officials.  

Those previous ThoughtExchanges will help the district define the top priorities that will be the foundation of the strategic plan, and the current exchange will help the district better define stakeholder priorities under the topic of academics.