LM December 2015

Sharing the good news in your district

The Arcola School District published an End of the Year Report in 2015 for all district stakeholders. This report has elicited on-going conversations and dynamic comments about the district. The spring of 2014 marked a true educational

By Dr. Tom Mulligan, superintendent Arcola 306

partnership between the Arcola School District and the community of Arcola. Community leaders worked with district leaders to establish a common goal of providing a one to one digital learning environment, which led to the community raising over $650,000 for the students of Arcola. This allowed the district to place an iPad and case in every student’s hands and also allowed for a MacBook, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple compatible projector to be purchased for every classroom. To honor this generous donation, our district was committed to providing the community with on-going information about the one to one digital learning environment. We did this through various social media outlets, our website, articles in the local paper, etc. As we began to see results towards the end of the year, our goal was to highlight those results while providing the community with something memorable. We hoped to use the community’s interest in our new partnership to not only highlight the successes from our one to one digital learning platform, but to also feature other key initiatives in the district and focus on the endless list of achievements of our students and staff members. To create the report, we worked with our local paper and their graphic designer. We provided the pictures and all the text in the report, and the graphic designer used her talents to put together a draft report. The total cost for the report, including the graphic designer’s time and printing, was $2,250 for 1,000 copies of the report. We could have added additional copies at a much lower cost per booklet. To distribute the report, we provided each family with a copy at registration. The paper provided us with

their mailing list and we mailed our report to everyone on their list, as well as anyone that donated to the digital learning fund. In addition, we provided local businesses and area realtors with copies of the report to distribute as well. We plan to do this report annually and make this a tradition in our community. Based on the great feedback from parents and community members, this is something they will be looking forward to each year. This report will become an annual reminder of the successful partnership and we will be able to share the good news in our district and at the same time, keep everyone informed of new and on-going initiatives.

Click here to view the End of Year Report.

Dr. Tom Mulligan has been an administrator in Illinois for over 20 years. He is currently in his fifteenth year as a superintendent and his second year in the Arcola School District. He earned his PhD in Educational Ad- ministration in 2005. He is proud to have been a member of IASA since 2001.

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