DEARBORN — Through cooperation and trust with staff members, students and the community, the Dearborn Board of Education and Superintendent Glenn Maleyko planned major developments for the 2016-17 school year, which they hope to expand over the years. 

“The district has implemented policies and taken actions to give students, teachers and the community an opportunity to be part of the decision making process,” said Dearborn Board of Education Vice President Mariam Bazzi. “It has done this with the intentional purpose of being more inclusive.”

Bazzi said Maleyko started a student advisory council last year to consider the students’ idea contributions and solve their problems.

Maleyko said it was a good experience to cooperate with students.

“They would meet with me on a regular basis,” Maleyko said. “I would get their input and I think they have a lot of good ideas and I’m very excited to see what happens with that program.”

Another collaboration is a “strategic plan” initiated by community members. Communications Director David Mustonen said it guides the district in many aspects for the next three years.

He said that was done by about 60 people from the community last spring who, “put together a new strategic plan for the district that really lays out the roadmap for the district for the next three years.”

According to Mustonen, the board will be voting on approving it in November.

The district also launched a plan last spring that involves all staff members called the Continuous Improvement Process. Mustonen said staff members come together to discuss how a task or job is approached to find a way to improve the process.

“It is a method of looking at how different jobs and different tasks and different things are done in the district,” he said. “And, then bringing together different committees of staff members and reviewing and collecting data on that process and then making improvements.”

Maleyko said there is also a “teacher union-led initiative” that intends to build stronger relationships between teachers and students through half hour home visits.

Mustonen said teachers go through training to learn how to go about these visits.

“It’s all about connecting with the student and building relationships with the student and family, finding out what are some of the needs in the home,” Mustonen added.

The program will be tested this year at two schools, Oakman Elementary and Long Elementary. Mustonen said the plan is to expand it in a couple of years to secondary schools if the feedback is good, but it takes time. 

The last major development is a co-teaching model that allows two teachers, usually a special education teacher and general education teacher, to work together rather than independently.