North Allegheny School District unveils new strategic and comprehensive plan

A new balanced scorecard is meant to effectively monitor North Allegheny School District’s performance using quantifiable data that will give the public a chance to see if the district is hitting or missing its target of growth and excellence.

This was part of a presentation by Superintendent Dr. Brendan Hyland, who presented an updated 2024-2029 strategic and comprehensive plan to the school board on Aug. 7. The plan is on display for the public before the board’s scheduled vote on it at its Sept. 25 regular meeting.

“With this plan we are going to put it all out there with everybody, the good and the things that we have to work on,” Hyland said.

The new strategic and comprehensive plan, which must be updated or reviewed every three years and submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, will reflect five guiding principles and a set of new goals that will be measured by the balanced scorecard with actual data. The last comprehensive plan was done in 2022.

“Having metrics to determine if we’re actually meeting our goals is strategically important — measuring whether we are being successful and where we have opportunity for growth,” he said.

The district administration surveyed students and parents over the past year, met with staff and worked with the school board to determine goals and key performance indicators, according to Hyland’s presentation.

The strategic and comprehensive plan is guided by five key principles, which includes ensuring NASD aspires to be the best; measurement of success of these goals; transparency; continuous improvement through data and action planning; and user-friendly documentation for both internal and external stakeholders.

Academic excellence, continuous learning, empowering students, making facilities for the future and safety and wellness are among the target objectives.

“We want to get to the final destination but the journey along the way is to get better every day through data and action planning,” Hyland said.

The balanced scorecard will have performance indicators that will include metrics on the district’s progress or lack thereof. It will have district-level and school-level goals.

Each card includes the baseline data year of 2023-2024 with a number of where each school is relating to that particular goal. An annual performance rating is given every year until 2028-2029.

“We want the community and board to validate our successes and acknowledge when we are not successful,” Hyland said.

There are key performance indicators within each goal and at the end of each school year, a green check means a target was met and a red ‘X’ means the opposite. A green dot will indicate increasing performance and a red dot, decreasing. A black dot will mean no growth at all. At the end of the 2028-2029, a last column will indicate a percentage of how much that particular school met its target.

An example of a key performance indicator for academic excellence includes each elementary school performing “above” or “well above” the statewide standards for academic growth expectations in a specific state testing tool in regard to English, language and arts, math and science. The metric used to check success are results of state testing scores by NA students.

The same metric will be used for subjects tested in the middle and high school levels. This goal will also be measured on overall score in College Board Advanced Placement Scores. Also, NA will increase in overall rankings in local and national lists, such as the U.S. News and World Report.

Each of the five objectives are led by two administrative goal leaders who will work with building administrators.

Hyland said they will continue to raise the bar if they are meeting a goal, and will share with the district when they are not.

“The only way you get better is to recognize where you have areas to grow,” he said.

Hyland said he plans to communicate the plan throughout the district and with the public throughout the next few months, including superintendent’s coffee days with families, business roundtables and student advisory meetings.

Several board members expressed support for the plan.

“In addition to focusing on academic achievement, I appreciate the fact there’s an effort to truly engage and advance not just our students but our staff, teachers and all the other support staff that work for North Allegheny,” said board director Dr. Vidya Szymkowiak.

The full presentation is available on the North Allegheny School District’s YouTube account and the plan is also posted online at northallegheny.org.