Monticello school strategic plan development underway

Work on developing the next five-year strategic plan is well underway, and Monticello Superintendent Brian Jaeger is just starting to dive into mounds of data collected through community surveys. 

The survey is a way to gauge sentiment from students, parents and school staff on the direction of the school and offers them a chance to provide ideas for future goals. 

The survey results will be parsed out and used by officials when formulating the district’s five-year strategic plan, which serves as a roadmap for improvement in the district. 

These community surveys have been turned in and are on Jaeger’s desk. In total, he received survey responses from 123 staff members, 131 parents and around 90% of the district’s students from Carpenter Elementary as well as the middle school and high school. Younger kids who attend Shannon Elementary don’t receive the surveys. 

While documenting the responses, Jaeger is also forming a committee each of parents, staff and high school students who sit on the student council to share the results with. 

“We meet and analyze that data and develop themes,” Jaeger said. “We will narrow it to four themes, and it seems like areas that were important in the past remain important (including) district communication and school culture.” 

He said each group of stakeholders will brainstorm ideas based on the most-occurring themes and come up with action plans. Once these are finalized, Jaeger shares the ideas with fellow school administrators to determine their feasibility. Then, the school board will look at the final priorities and consider approving it for implementation. Jaeger said the goal is to have the plan finalized by the time the new fiscal year begins on July 1. 

The surveys contained two parts. One was a 1-10 ranking on a variety of metrics. The second portion included open-ended questions asking the participant’s thoughts on “what we are doing well and what we need to improve at,” Jaeger said. 

He said this process is vital in creating a direction for the district. 

“It’s about what our community wants in a district and involved all our stakeholders,” Jaeger said. “Last time, school facilities was big, and we were able to finish up the (new) middle school and begin on an elementary project. We put (the plan) together and followed it like a roadmap. Hopefully this time we can also identify what our kids, parents and staff think the district needs … Everything we get out of this is something we can learn about ourselves.”

Oftentimes, Jaeger said the students comment on the quality of school lunches. He said the district tries to listen to this feedback and tweak what it can, but school lunches must adhere to nutritional guidelines set by the National School Lunch Program. 

“The cheese and sauce (for a pizza) need to have a specific sodium content,” Jaeger said as an example of the guidelines. “But that’s part of the process. Our food services director meets with students and high school leadership and says ‘here’s what we are limited to.’ One thing we have done is we can bring in samples of all the cookies we can serve and say ‘here, try these.’” 

Jaeger said early returns from the parent and staff surveys indicate folks generally approve of items such as school accessibility and safety. 

Next year’s calendar set

The calendar for the 2026-27 public school year in Monticello has been set.

The Monticello Community School District School Board approved the calendar at last week’s meeting. 

The calendar, similar to this year, uses the Christmas break as a natural break between semesters, with the last day of the first semester being Tuesday, Dec. 22. 

New this year are early dismissals on the first three Wednesdays in May 2027. This was at the request of teachers, said District Superintendent Brian Jaeger. 

Principal retirement

The principal of Monticello’s two elementary schools, Shannon Kehoe, will retire at the end of the school year. 

These plans were announced by Jaeger at last week’s board meeting. Kehoe has been an educator for 30 years, the last two of which were in Monticello. 

“She has been tossing this around, and it is a tough decision,” Jaeger told the board. “She talked to me today (Jan. 28) about it. We have been lucky to have her. I think one of the reasons she (told me about this) today is she knew we had a (board) meeting and she wanted us to be able to get a jump on (finding a replacement).”

Other business

• The board approved the 2026-27 high school handbook, including updated graduation requirements to include a civics test and CPR class. It also included multiple policy changes, a new listing of extracurricular activities and reflected new and discontinued courses. The full handbook can be found on the district’s website. Under the “Quick Links” tab, select “district downloads” to navigate to the handbook. 

• The board approved the district’s plan of study for dual-credit courses with Kirkwood. 

• The board approved the following hires: Abby Fagan as girls assistant track coach and Andrea Glawatz as special education program associate at Shannon Elementary. 

• The board approved the following resignations: Doug Picray as special education bus driver after 11 years of service; and Kim McQuillen as the middle school physical education teacher after 35 years of service. McQuillen is the first teacher to take advantage of the district’s teacher early-retirement incentives. There are two slots for these incentives remaining.