Birthday milestone provides opportunity to reflect on past and plan for futureby Fulton School Superintendent Stephen Dolinger

On Feb. 7, the Fulton County School System marked its 130th anniversary.

Fulton has a long and distinguished history as the premier educational leader. Those of us now involved in the school system appreciate our early leaders for setting the pace and pointing our district to excellence.

We look forward to continuing their legacy. On Feb. 8, as part of our anniversary celebration, I presented to the Board of Education a "State of the System" address.

Using a business management tool known as the balanced scorecard, the Fulton County Board of Education has set five key goal areas for the system: student achievement, stakeholder satisfaction, efficient and effective instructional and administrative processes, staff learning and growth, and financial accountability.

The State of the System reviewed the objectives within each goal area and painted the picture of where we currently are as a school system, and where we hope to be in the near future. The overall summary is that the Fulton County community should be proud of the school system. Just as in our earlier history, Fulton County continues to lead the way toward educational excellence.

However, since we believe in continual improvement, we are far from satisfied with the status quo. As part of the balanced scorecard, the board set performance targets in each of the five goal areas, and challenged the school system staff to reach or exceed those targets. We are prepared to hit our targets, but we will not get there without a plan.

That is why every school and department is undergoing a thorough evaluation of past performance and writing new strategic plans that focus on what we want as our end results. The board supports this planning by introducing a financial award program for schools that reach their performance targets.

At the central office level, departments are finding that the school system budget now ties directly with the system plan. Items not listed in the plan, or not meeting the balanced scorecard goal areas, may not receive funding.

We believe this results-based focus to our planning will bring about positive change. The result will be increased student achievement, as well as success in all the goal areas listed in our balanced scorecard.

As always, we thank you for working with us as we incorporate these business principles and develop the local, department and system plans. For 130 years, the Fulton community has shared in the school system's vision and has worked to create a model educational program. As we say happy birthday to the school system, we also say thank you for your support. Without the community, the school system would not have survived and flourished.

If you would like more information on the Fulton County School System, visit our Web site at www.fulton.k12.ga.us; or call our Community Relations Department at 404-763-6830.