Eanes school board members met with administrators Monday to discuss the district’s vision for the future and the goals it needs to put in place to achieve it during tough financial times.

“We want to look at strategies for moving forward,” Superintendent Nola Wellman told board members.

Included as a goal was a focus on providing learning opportunities for students that prepare them for the future and inspire them to reach their highest potential. Board member Colleen Jones questioned whether the learning opportunity goals set by the district were too focused on high school students.

“Outside the [Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests], everything – [Advanced Placement] and ACT [tests] – those things all seem oriented to older kids,” she said. “Is there anything set to measure the critical thinking skills of lower-level students.”

“One way we know we are being successful at the lower [grade] levels is because the kids are so successful at the higher levels,” said Bill Bechtol, district curriculum and instruction head.

Bechtol said the district wanted to look at ways of improving the assessment of learning in the district above state standards.

“One of the greatest needs for improvement we have is in assessment,” he said. “Teachers are not trained in assessment. That is a big goal for us over the next few years. The real question is with 21st-century skills. It is a challenge to determine those skills.”

Those new types of learning abilities require increasing communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creative skills, Bechtol said.

Wellman said administrators are trying to develop new ways to focus on how successfully students are learning at lower-grade levels.

“The key to that is finding reliable methods of assessment,” she said. “The whole idea of equating assessment with tests has to end. Assessment can be observation.”

Wellman said the way school districts have assessed learning in the past will not be an adequate way to assess changing learning skills in the future.

“Now, assessment is focused on what you have learned – past tense,’ ” she said. “What we are talking about is the assessment for the future – ‘What do I need to learn?’ We are trying to turn that view around and look at a formative assessment.”

Bechtol said district officials want to continue to focus support in the coming years in helping its teachers and staff members put their valuable experience and ideas to work across grade levels.

“We have to take advantage of those unbelievable talents and skills that we have into very purposeful collaboration focused on the correct priorities,” he said. “It’s through the purposeful collaboration between our teachers – that is where we will grow them.”

Jones and Wellman expressed concern during Monday’s study session over how the district will continue to fund its $500,000-a-year instructional partner program after federal funding now used to pay for those partners ends next school year. Wellman credited the program with doing more for district growth in achievement than any other program in her eight-year tenure. She said maintaining such programs and the district goal of providing learning opportunities that prepare students for the future will be an increasingly challenging in the strained budget years ahead. District administrators will likely bring recommendations for 2011-12 program cuts to the board in a mid-winter meeting, she said.

“Every year we are going to have to take a look at our goals and decide what we can afford,” said Larry Keiser, district business office head. “We may look at some of them and say, ‘Well, that is a great thing, but we just can’t afford it this year.’ ”

Board members also discussed the idea of adopting conflict of interest policy or regulations to govern district volunteers who serve in advisory or oversight capacities or who make decisions related to contracting or purchasing.