News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Alpena Public Schools Board Members Sarah Fritz and Anna Meinhardt listen to discussion about goals addressing the fifth pillar of the strategic plan at the board’s retreat on Monday.

ALPENA — In the midst of the community’s concern about low test scores, the Alpena Public Schools board of education is setting goals to help students bolster their learning.

The APS board of education had a board retreat on Monday to discuss goals based on the five pillars of the district’s strategic plan.

Those five pillars are academics and programs, whole child development, personnel, family and community partnership, and stewardship.

APS Superintendent Dave Rabbideau presented preliminary goals for the board members to discuss and fine tune before their next workshop meeting.

In academics and programs, Rabbideau set goals of improving mathematics scores by 15 percentage points and English language arts scores by 10 percentage points by the Spring of 2030 from the Fall 2025 baseline. He also set a goal of reducing the proficiency gap on state assessments between economically disadvantaged and non-economically disadvantaged students by 50% in both ELA and mathematics.

“Our economically disadvantaged students are performing better than the state average for economically disadvantaged students,” Rabbideau said.

Rabbideau pulled up data from the Acadience assessment that kindergartners and first graders take before the start of the school year. The test shows whether students have the reading skills necessary to learn at the kindergarten level.

According to that assessment, 40% of students entering kindergarten in APS met or exceeded the benchmark before starting the 2025-2026 school year.

The whole child development goal is to increase the district’s average school quality and school student success index score by 10 points from the 2024 baseline by 2030, with a focus on improving chronic absenteeism rates.

In the personnel pillar, Rabbideau set a goal to increase the district’s overall Rehmann Employee Engagement mean score to the 50th percentile or higher.

He also set a goal to increase the one year retention rate of all new staff to 90% through the development and implementation of a comprehensive, multi-year induction and mentorship program by 2030.

APS Human Resources Director Michele Vilas said that the district loses at least 50% of their new hires each year.

In the family and community partnerships pillar, the district will set out to increase the percentage of families who strongly agree that the district builds trusting relationships and communicates effectively by 14 percentage points, as measured by an annual family and community survey.

By 2030, the district will ensure that 80% of families are actively engaged in their child’s education by participating in at least two school-sponsored academic events or conferences per year e.g. parent-teacher conferences, curriculum nights, or student-led conferences.

Finally in the stewardship pillar, the district will maintain a fiscally responsible budget that aligns resources to the strategic plan and maintains a fund balance aligned with board policy.

By 2026, the goal is to develop and begin implementation of a comprehensive, 5-year facility master plan that addresses deferred maintenance, modernizes learning environments, and ensures the long-term viability of district assets.

“I think this is awesome,” Board Member Monica Dziesinski said. “I mean, these are amazing goals…It’s exciting.”

The board will discuss the goals further at the next workshop meeting which is scheduled for next Monday, Oct. 20.