The purpose of school improvement planning is to ensure that teachers and administrators work collaboratively toward continuous improvement of the quality of teaching and learning in their school. The school principal, the school leadership team, and the faculty are responsible for designing an annual School Improvement Plan to be submitted to the Superintendent of Schools by October 1 of each school year.  In those buildings where a Site Plan has been developed, the Site Plan is the School Improvement Plan.  The school improvement goals in these buildings will consist of the action plans chosen for implementation in that school year.

Professional development is a key component of the School Improvement Plan or Site Plan. Each school’s plan includes a professional development component that will lead to improvements in instruction and resulting improvements in student achievement.

John Lyman’s School Improvement Plan for 2006-2007 includes a focus on improving accuracy and fluency with math facts and concepts in order to improve students’ problem-solving ability. Parents should expect to see, and probably to sign off on, math homework activities designed to improve fluency with math facts. While the bulk of instruction and practice in math facts is initiated in school, the bulk of instructional time must be devoted to the development of math concepts. For this reason, students are expected to practice their facts at home for accuracy and speed. A second focus is the development of reading comprehension strategies for fiction and non-fiction.

The 2006-2007 School Improvement Plan has two main goals:

1. All students will increase their accuracy and speed with basic math facts, appropriate to their grade level, in order to compute and solve problems effectively and efficiently;
2. All students will use a combination of strategies to develop and improve their reading comprehension with a variety of texts, both fiction and non-fiction, in order to develop a lifelong love of reading.