District 50 wants critical thinkers

Preparing children on how to compete globally and raising reading achievement were among the elements Woodland Elementary District 50's strategic plan presented at a special forum Tuesday night.

Bruce Bohren, president of Gurnee-based District 50, said work on the strategic plan started in fall 2006, with official adoption occurring in March. The document primarily covers student learning, finance, the school community and residents living with Woodland's boundaries.

Bohren said one area Woodland will concentrate on is prepare children on how to compete, not just locally or in the United States, but globally. Part of the strategic plan calls for District 50 to create an environment to develop students' critical-thinking skills.

Woodland also needs to assume a role in preparing children to compete for jobs 20 years down the road, said board member Mark Vondracek.

"We can't even conceive what they'll be up against," Vondracek said. "Jobs that haven't even been created, they'll be competing for."

About 20 parents who attended the school at Woodland Intermediate School in Gurnee also learned the district wants to implement research-based early-intervening initiatives in an effort to boost reading achievement to more than 92 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on the state's 2012 third-grade standardized achievement tests.

Meanwhile, board member Lawrence Gregorash answered a parent's question about why it seems today's students aren't better off despite the availability of more teaching specialists.

"Are we failing or have we, in many ways, raised the standards we expect?" responded Gregorash.

Gregorash added that old teaching methods primarily involved repetition, which no longer works in an era that demands critical thinking skills.

With more than 7,000 students Woodland covers most of Gurnee and parts of Grayslake, Park City, Old Mill Creek, Third Lake, Waukegan, Lake Villa, Wadsworth and Libertyville. District 50 also covers the unincorporated Lake County areas known as Gages Lake and Wildwood.