SPANISH FORT, Ala. —Organizers of Baldwin County’s grassroots “Yes We Can” movement to improve schools and the communities they serve are shifting methodically from planning to action.

Three months after persuading the Baldwin County Board of Education to adopt its Community Agreement, the Baldwin County Education Coalition, in partnership with the school district, is working to spell out directives for meeting each goal and deciding which group assumes responsibility for each goal’s implementation.

“We’ve spent the last four weeks shaping a framework for the development of a detailed action plan for both the school district and the community to address the expectations we heard from the people who participated in the Community Conversations held last year,” said Denise D’Oliveira, executive director of Supporting Educational Enrichment in Daphne’s Schools and a spokesperson for the countywide education coalition.

Some 85 conversations culled input from about 1,300 area residents concerned about the condition and direction of public education in Baldwin County. The action plan being drafted will focus on the five areas identified by the Community Agreement as critical to improving the quality of education countywide:

• Data-driven accountability.
• Leadership.
• Ensuring every child is college or career ready.
• Communications.
• Funding.

“The coalition is going to become a resource for reporting on the progress that’s being made within the school district and for continuing to hold the schools accountable for what the community says they want and expect,” D’Oliveira said.

Yes We Can pools the resources of the county school system’s seven feeder patterns, and the countywide coalition drives the effort in cooperation with the public school system as well as business and community leaders.

 The coalition comprises SEEDS, the South Baldwin Chamber Foundation, North Baldwin Coalition for Excellence in Education, Central Baldwin Education Foundation, Alabama Gulf Coast Area Education Enrichment Foundation, Fairhope Educational Enrichment Foundation and Spanish Fort Educational Enrichment Foundation.

“Our most important responsibility is going to be ongoing public engagement where we listen and get input from the community but also to communicate with the school district and citizens about the progress being made in those five key areas,” D’Oliveira said. “It will be the coalition’s mission to work as a mechanism for accountability.”

Terry Burkle, who leads the Central Baldwin Education Foundation, said she understands a certain degree of anxiety by the public over the amount of time the process is taking.

“We’re taking it slow to be sure we do it right and, above all, making sure we stay in line with what the community said (it) want in the Community Agreement,” Burkle said, adding, “And for the people who have volunteered their time to be involved with this process, it’s been a huge commitment, and we’re so appreciative of everything they’re doing, I think it just shows that they have a commitment to community and to education and to our children’s futures.”

D’Oliveira said each community-based action team responsible for addressing one of the five core areas identified in the agreement, will continue meeting in two-hour sessions during the month of April.

“The community task force members are identifying the action steps we must take responsibility for in order to support the district’s work in those areas as well as to hold them accountable and report progress to the community.  Our own work is going to focus on keeping the community informed about all of work being done in those five priority areas and keeping them engaged to ensure the school system is making gains toward meeting community expectations,” she said.

Thirty-, 60- and 90-day goals will then be unveiled at the Baldwin County Board of Education’s May 17 meeting, ensuring the action plan is ready for implementation by the start of the 2011-12 school year.

“In terms of communications, we would like to put together a benchmark survey over the next six weeks for parents, teacher/school staff and interested citizens to be disseminated electronically before school is out. The input we receive from that effort will be used to develop a comprehensive, co-owned communications plan over the summer that will be launched as part of the overall strategic plan at the opening of school,” she said.

In addition, the public can expect to see new accountability tools in the fall such as “dashboards” posted in each school to track students’ academic progress against consistent national standards.  

Meanwhile, the big push on the community side will be formalizing the coalition as an independent, nonprofit countywide organization that will better enable the group to leverage its strong grassroots network to access funding and other resources that will better serve students.

“We have seen how incredibly effective we can be when we are all aligned and working on the same goals, and we don’t want to lose that momentum,” D’Oliveira said.

“Our individual education foundations won’t be going away; they will continue to raise money and support their own schools, but this initiative means we’ll be coming together in a formal and continuous effort to build on the progress we’ve made so far as a countywide network.”