In the midst of a heated rivalry football game, the Battle Ground Public Schools (BGPS) district honored current and former staff and alumni of Battle Ground and Prairie high schools at halftime on Friday, Sept. 19.
The idea, Battle Ground Legacy Night, was formed to recognize the important role that staff and alumni have in shaping the schools and communities of the large school district.
“The idea just came through many discussions over time, whether they were with employees or with community members about the changes in our community over multiple decades,” said BGPS Superintendent Shelly Whitten. “And the idea just kind of came out about how sporting events or any events, frankly, I mean, whether they be band and choir events or football games or basketball games or just those things brought our community out to our schools and how those things really felt like they were bringing our entire community together.”
The school district had an information booth for people to learn about the district’s strategic plan and also provide input.
With fans of two rival schools in the district gathering at District Stadium, Whitten said the game served as the perfect opportunity for community engagement.
“We’re in a time where people have varying opinions,” Whitten said. “We’re really trying to make sure that we focus on what makes us uniquely the same and makes us connected. So we’re trying to find more and more connections. We’ve been working on those types of things in our classrooms, and our strategic plan talks about the importance of bringing us together, and so we just felt like it was important for us to do that at a larger districtwide event that would be pulling families from both ends of our community.”
As a lot of input was provided from people who have or are attending the school district in one way or another, hearing from them is critical.
“I think it's always important to hear the voices of people who have lived here for a long time as well as new voices, too,” Whitten said. “The importance all the way around is big for us because we want our schools to be a reflection of our community, and the only way to do that is to get input.”
Another important aspect of gathering input is that Whitten said the school district is needing to start considering the timeline of their strategic plan and whether modifications need to be made. She said that the school district has just another year of the strategic plan until the district staff buckles down to review it and make any adaptations and changes.
“We don’t want to be single minded,” Whitten said. “We want to make sure that we’re getting the voices of multiple players. When we developed it, of course we had input from community members. We had our citizens advisory committee look at it, our student advisory committee look at it, our board looked at it.”
The strategic plan has three major components, Whitten said, with the first being the mental safety of students with fostering a supportive environment. Second is the focus on high quality instruction. And third is the collaboration efforts that cultivate trust.
Battle Ground Legacy Night is a pinnacle feature of that goal.
“But anything that you develop really as a fresh star. When you get into the implementation, you realize the things that might be missing,” Whitten said.
Whitten added that school district staff having community dialogue is crucial to ensure the district makes the right decisions. She said she believes the district is still recovering from the COVID pandemic, saying that it hurt the community being engaged in schools and getting into the buildings.
“We still have way less parent volunteers and things like that in the schools, and so we think that it’s really important to just have a campaign to try and reengage that work of bringing people back into the schools,” Whitten said. “When people are in schools, they understand better what is happening and that allows us to have a stronger feedback loop and to just make sure our schools reflect what our community wants and values from their schools.”
To learn more about the BGPS strategic plan, visit battlegroundps.org/page/strategic-plan.
