Superintendent’s Blog: 2024-2025 Annual Plan – We Belong. We Learn. We Lead.

Dear BSD Community, 

Happy summer! We’re just about a month away from the start of a new and exciting school year! I hope families and staff are taking some time to rest and have fun. I also love seeing BSD high school students in the community working in summer jobs and volunteering.  

This is a summer update to share some exciting news about the future of the Bellevue School District. We are launching a new 5-year strategic plan this year. And at our regular board meeting on August 1, 2024, our board approved an annual plan (initiatives, goals and metrics for this year) that is inspiring and has the potential to launch us into a future of innovation, hope, and endless possibilities for our students, families, staff, and community. 

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Our Three Priorities: We Belong. We Learn. We Lead. 

From the personal stories of students, staff, and families in one-on-one empathy interviews, our strategic plan guiding coalition came up with three big priorities: We Belong. We Learn. We Lead. Over the next five years, we want to build a school and district community where every student, staff, and family member experiences a genuine sense of belonging within a beloved community. We want learning to be joyful, innovative, and strengths-based, where passion for learning is ignited by placing student voice and agency at the heart of teaching and learning. And finally, our ultimate goal as a district is to send students into the world healthy, equipped, and passionate about improving conditions for people and the planet.  

To do this, we are kicking this plan off with 20 key initiatives, some of which are just for the year, but most of which last all five years. Note to staff: Twenty is a lot, but we have intentionally spread this important work across the system so that no teacher or staff member is having to shoulder more than is reasonable. In addition, the school board has articulated their desire that we be mindful of workload in accomplishing our goals. With that said…  

Our WE BELONG Initiatives for the 2024-25 School Year 

1. Human-Centered Systems and Relationships – Relationships matter. This is particularly true, coming out of the pandemic. Based on this, every district department will develop goals to build human-centered systems and prioritize relationships. Human-centered systems and relationships are best described as the intersection of customer service, expert support, being known and cared for, and cultural competence. Schools will embed human-centered systems and relationships in their strategies to improve student learning.  

2. Inclusion and Accessibility – We are committed to prioritizing relationships by redesigning the 504 and IEP processes to improve experiences for students, families, and staff. We also want to elevate the goals of inclusion and accessibility in every space, including by adding American Sign Language as one of the languages our kids can learn in Bellevue. 

3. BSD Welcome Center – We want families to feel welcomed in our district from their first visit to our website, to enrolling their child in kindergarten, to learning how they can volunteer in their child’s school. To accomplish this, we are launching a new district Welcome Center, located at the district office (ESC East). Through the Welcome Center, we will: enhance the enrollment experience, bring back a system to encourage parent and community volunteerism, host parent trainings and community building, strengthen ties with community partners, and develop parent peer support. 

4. Multilingualism for All – Building on the success of our dual language programs, we are planning to expand and improve multilingual experiences for students. This year, this includes launching the state’s first public elementary Korean language program at Newport Heights and launching Korean and Hindi as languages kids can take in middle school. 

5. Increasing Diversity of Staff – Building on our past progress in hiring staff who reflect the diversity of our community, we will continue to strive to hire teachers, leaders, and staff who have shared cultural and linguistic backgrounds of our kids and families. 

6. Black Excellence in Bellevue – Many of our Black staff, students, and families have shared with us a need for a deeper sense of belonging, safety, connection, learning and empowerment in Bellevue. In response, we are planning to design and then launch a Black Excellence in Bellevue (BxB) initiative that will build in supports and strategies to uplift our Black community in Bellevue. 

7. Advisory-Based Middle Schools – This year is a planning year to deliver on advisories – a key recommendation in the Reimagining Middle School design process. Creating advisory-based middle schools will improve relationship building and sense of belonging for our students and create more nurturing environments during these critical years in a child’s education. 

8. Comprehensive Equity Plan – We will design and launch a comprehensive equity plan that includes system-wide professional development, implementation of our new equity-driven decision-making process, and systems to track and effectively address racism, discrimination and microaggressions in service of building our Beloved Community. 

Our WE LEARN Initiatives for the 2024-25 School Year 

9. School Improvement Plans – School staff will develop SIPs to enhance student engagement and learning, and address equity imperatives. 

10. Preschool – We will continue to increase access to high-quality, inclusive, opportunity-gap closing, multilingual preschool.  

11. Elementary Literacy – Building on the incredible work of staff and families, we will continue our implementation of foundational literacy instruction by launching the use of a new literacy curriculum, K-5. We will build out plans for equitable intervention support to support students who need additional support to learn to read. 

12. Secondary Math – We will continue our work in math to improve outcomes and shrink opportunity gaps through implementation of the newly adopted secondary math curriculum. Similar to literacy, we will build out plans for equitable intervention support to support students who need additional support to be proficient in math. 

13. Problem-Based Learning in Middle Schools – We will launch problem-based learning in middle schools as key recommendation of the Reimagining Middle School design process. 

14. Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching – We will spend this year preparing our system for the launch of the updated Danielson teaching framework, which centers culturally responsive teaching and learning and equity in the classroom. WE will focus system-wide on Domain 3: The Student Learning Experience. 

15. Multiple Pathways to Measure Student Success – We will pursue innovative and equitable ways for students to demonstrate learning, understanding, achievement, and mastery (ex. digital portfolios, capstone projects, industry certifications). We will also improve consistency in high school grading practices. 

Our WE LEAD Initiatives for the 2024-25 School Year 

16. For Our Future World – We want to prepare students across all disciplines (ex. music, art, social studies, science, Career and Technical Education) to lead for improved conditions for people (themselves and others) and the planet. Whether a student is studying how to address the acidification of the oceans in chemistry, learning how to build tiny homes in CTE for individuals experiencing homelessness, or creating sculptures in AP art to bring awareness of the contributions of LGBTQ+ figures in history, students in Bellevue will be able to use their passions, talents, knowledge, and skills to create a better world for themselves, others, and our environment. 

17. Equity-Driven Decision-Making (EDDM) – In July, the school board adopted a new procedure 0130P to codify an “equity-driven decision-making process.” Last year, we utilized this process in our middle school consolidation process and in our strategic planning process. This year, our goal is to expand the implementation of EDDM at the district level and begin to train school leadership teams on the principles of equity-driven decision-making.  

18. Student Voice and Agency – Our students are the future, and their individual and collective voices are powerful. We want to continue to elevate student voice and agency at the superintendent and school board level, in the school improvement process, in the strategic planning process, and in our environmental sustainability efforts. 

19. Voice of Our Diverse Community – In addition to expanding the voice of our community in our equity-driven decision-making processes, we want to form committees to intentionally bring the community voice into our decision-making process. 

20. Environmental Sustainability – From protecting sharks to planting trees, our students as early as preschool are passionate about taking care of our planet. We want to engage students in the co-design of school-based sustainability goals to be codified in school improvement plans. We also want to set district goals that align to our district sustainability plan, the design of which itself was led by our students. 

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The Bottom Line – Bellevue Provides an Education for Our Future World 

Listening to the news these days can be depressing and hopeless – war, housing insecurity, divisiveness, racism, violence. But in education, hope abounds from the endless possibilities that our children bring. If we prepare our kids well and teach them to care for each other and our environment, then we can have a tangible, positive impact on our future. That’s what sets the Bellevue School District apart: we provide an education for our future world.   

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Measuring Success and Next Steps 

To see the full 5-year strategic plan and 2024-25 annual plan, including how we will measure success, please visit our Strategic Plan webpage. Our goal is to use a mix of surveys, empathy interviews, and higher-level quantitative data (ex. reading and math scores, attendance) to measure our progress towards our goals. In addition, we are going to be convening a new Strategic Plan Guiding Coalition that will help us in refining our initiatives and setting more specific measures and goals. 

If you stuck with me this whole way, congratulations. I’m excited for what is to come this next school year. Have a wonderful rest of your summer. See you all for the first day of school on September 3 (1st grade – 12th grade), or September 6 (kindergarten)!  

Dr. Aramaki