Mundelein High forming panels to focus on future

Having spent months discussing how best to improve Mundelein High School, administrators, staff members and community volunteers are grouping their goals into four categories for further review.

Superintendent Jody Ware called the four groupings "vision areas." They are:

•Student achievement.

•Facilitation of learning, including tutoring and support programs.

•Finance and facilities.

•School and community culture, a category that includes student behavior, participation in extracurricular activities and diversity, among other topics.

"We feel if we do well in all four areas, we can be an exemplary high school in Lake County," Ware said.

The effort is part of the development of a long-range plan that will set objectives for the school through 2011, Ware said. The school board could approve the plan this month or in January, she said.

On Monday, Ware will lead a staff and community discussion about those goals at the Hawley Street campus.

"It's critical for us to know what our target is for success, and (to) have identified measures and goals," Ware said.

The discussion is set for 6:30 p.m. and is open to the public. Invitations already have been sent to about 100 volunteers who worked with the school's long-range planning committee and the M-PACT group, a community organization that studied the school's facility needs over the past year and recommended nearly $80 million in improvements.

Last month, the school board opted to delay until spring 2010 asking residents for a tax-rate increase that would fund some or all of those improvements.

Officials will form new committees to examine each of the four vision areas. The groups will invite members of the public to join - having a child enrolled at Mundelein High is not required, Ware said.

"Having community involvement is great," she added.

More information is available on the district's Web site, mundeleinmustangs.com.