PANAMA — The first presentation on strategic planning was given to the Panama Central School Board of Education at their recent March meeting.

Superintendent Aaron Wolfe has begun to include a section of his time during each meeting to discuss with the board where they would like to see Panama school in five to 10 years. He began the first discussion with vocabulary terms and with the idea of what the board dreams of the school becoming.

“I want to begin a conversation and a dialogue about the future,” Wolfe said.

Terms that Wolfe discussed included vision, mission, goals and objectives. The vision when it comes to strategic planning is what an ideal future would look like, or what the board wants the school to look like. The mission is what the school does on a daily basis, or what the beliefs of the board are. Goals included what Wolfe referred to as SMAHRT goals; specific, measurable, attainable, humane, realistic, and time-bound goals.

“What I’m suggesting here with strategic planning is not that we have to reinvent everything, but I think we might want to reanalyze everything and take a look at it and see where we’re going,” Wolfe said.

Wolfe ended his presentation with a few essential questions; how does the board want people to describe their organization? What problem are they trying to solve? What opportunity are they trying to seize? What actions do they need to take? How will they know when the problem is solved? What information do they need to know when the problem is solved? When do they think they can solve the problem? How will they measure progress?

“These are essential questions as we enter into, who do we want to be in ten years,” Wolfe said. “What do we want to achieve in ten years? … These are the kinds of questions we should be getting into as we strategically plan.”

The rest of Wolfe’s section of the meeting included discussion on policies and an update on the capital project. At the moment there are three main focus areas for the next potential capital project; the cafeteria, the front entrance to the building — which both posed some security concerns — and the roof of the north gym.

In other news;

¯ Literacy night for the elementary students went well.

¯ There will be two board of education seats open during the next election time.

¯ There was also a discussion of the budget and personnel approval, including Chris Payne as the varsity girls flag football coach.

¯ The board also discussed BOCES contracts for the copy machine in the business office and held a conversation regarding if they could work to replace the scoreboard. The budget is set to be finalized for the next meeting.