T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM — Marshalltown Community School District Board of Education President Sean Heitmann and Superintendent Theron Schutte listen to administrators talk about different pillars of the 2025-30 Strategic Plan. A first draft of the plan was presented during the board’s regular Monday meeting.

More than a year’s worth of work was brought before the Marshalltown Community School District Board of Education during the regular Monday meeting. The 2025-30 Strategic Plan was presented by district administrators, each focusing on five different pillars.

Superintendent Theron Schutte was happy to bring the plan forward.

“It’s fair to say there’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears over this,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. We started this in January, a year ago, seeking input first from stakeholders, primarily staff and then parents. We simply asked the questions, what’s going well and what needs improvement within the district.”

Director of Instruction Shauna Smith spoke on the first pillar, Student Achievement. She said the Iowa School Performance Profile is the best tool to use to look at the different measurements within each school building.

“We said by 2030, each MCSD [Marshalltown Community School District] building would attain a commendable status or higher as measured by the Iowa School Performance Profile,” Smith said. “. . . We felt that was a great measurement to be able to show the achievement we have here in Marshalltown.”

Some strategic actions the district can take include enhancing student and staff support systems, utilizing inclusive special education practices and fostering business partnerships and work-based learning. Smith said the MCSD has a lot of supplementary programs, such as Prisms Implementation in Miller Middle School, Marshalltown High School and Marshalltown Learning Academy.

“Those are outliers which really help us stand out as a district beyond the status-quo district that would be here in Iowa,” she said. “We want to keep pushing for our kids to have extraordinary experiences that are going to better prepare them for the real world.”

Speaking on Staff Development, MCSD Human Resources Director Jacque Wyant said they have a goal of 95 percent certified staff retention.

“That would be awesome, especially those special ed teachers,” she said. “The key is (to) hang onto them every year. We don’t want to train them well and have them move away. We want to keep them here. So, by 2030, we want to enhance professional development.”

Wyant said new teachers regularly comment how supported they feel during their onboarding.

“We want everybody to feel that 100 percent of the time,” she said.

Wyant said that extends to all employees – bus drivers, monitors, paraeducators, custodians and more. She said there are things occurring in their fields in which they could use some professional learning. In addition to professional development, other strategic actions for Staff Development include employee engagement and conducting evaluations.

Schutte presented the Learning Environments pillar to the board. He said the district will embark on an assessment of all six elementary schools and see what improvements need to be made. There is also some additional work to be done at the high school as it relates to extracurricular activities such as baseball and softball, he said.

“We’re going to try to chip away at some of those low-hanging fruits that we can accomplish over time,” Schutte said.

Another huge piece of the Learning Environments pillar is social-emotional behavioral health.

“We’re probably one of the few districts in the state that actually has a strategic plan around that,” he said.

Rebuilding partnerships with mental health providers in the community is important. At one time, MCSD had eight such partners, but staffing concerns caused many of the partnerships to end or decrease.

“Hopefully we can figure out a way . . . to provide students and their families with what they need,” Schutte said.

Director of Communications Abby Koch addressed the Communication and Engagement pillar. She said a goal is to implement standardized protocols and practice since there are so many languages spoken in each MCSD building.

“How do we ensure, no matter what building you’re going to, there’s a standardized way of communicating going forward, serving our families?” Koch asked.

Using a multi-pronged approach might be one way to do that, she said. That could include staff training, enhanced multilingual accessibility and unified communication platforms. In addition to improved communications some strategic actions for the pillar include leveraging community engagement and alumni support and improving crisis communications.

Director of Business Operations Randy Denham addressed the Resources pillar. Strategic actions include sustaining strong financial health using the cash reserve, certified enrollment trends, general fund balance and more. Denham said this pillar was the most difficult

“As we were coming up with different actions and goals, we found some things fit better under other pillars,” he said. “A lot of this is to continue doing what we’ve been doing, as far as sustaining strong financial health indicators.”

Another strategic action includes enhancing infrastructure and energy efficiency.

“The challenge here will be coming out of the COVID world and having funding for the last several years, seeking grants and other funding . . . will be key,” Denham said.

He said that while the district might want to increase staff retention and get new hires, the reality is there is a shallower talent pool. Denham suggested utilizing service solutions to maximize, such as artificial intelligence, which would not be used to replace employees, but help them out.

Schutte said they are open to other strategic actions if the board feels some are missing.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

In other business, board members:

• Approved the 2025-26 course manual for Marshalltown High School. Some new classes include digital illustration and global cuisine.

• Read through the first draft of the 2025-26 school calendar year. The first day is Aug. 25 and the last is June 4, 2026. Schutte said one unique feature of next year’s calendar is a full week off for Thanksgiving, Nov. 24 through Nov. 28, which accommodates two professional development days. Students will also have a two-week winter break from Dec. 22 to Jan. 2, 2026. They will also have a full week of spring break in 2026 from March 16 through March 20.

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.