Access the state report card for the schools and/or school district in which you are currently employed, were most recently employed, or in which you currently reside. If you, as an educational leader, were asked to present the report card information to a heterogeneous group of community members, think about the following questions:
what areas would you highlight?
What areas might be questioned by your audience?
Were you surprised by any of the information on the report card(s)?
Provide the web link to the report card data with three paragraphs of narrative addressing: areas to highlight, areas that may be questioned, and your personal reaction to the data on the report card.

Assignment: Mini Case Study
The superintendent of the school district you selected for the Assignment Preparation has just been informed by the State Board of Education that 25 elementary, 25 middle, and 25 high schools in all 50 states will be judged the best all around schools in the state. The decisions will be made in early August and will be based on state school report card data and impressions of local realtors who will be prepared, by a committee comprised of State Board and American Realtors� Association members, to visit schools in their local communities and feed impressions back to the committee. Selected schools will be featured in a magazine to be put in the packet of realtors at the Association of American Realtor�s national convention next year – and the school will receive a one-time grant of $500,000.

The state branch of the realtors� association announced this plan in mid-January at a well-publicized press conference around noon of the same morning on which it was announced to the state�s superintendents via a high priority email message. K-12 teachers and administrators, and the local business community, can�t see any downside to the possibility of a school in their district being selected and are already floating suggestions on how to spend the money. The district school board has already decided that all seven schools in the district will be entered in the competition and your district�s superintendent quickly assembled a task force to make planning recommendations for public relations outreach to the team of realtors who will be visiting the school in May. You, as an educational leader in the school setting where you currently work (or most recently worked), have been asked to serve on the task force. A recent needs assessment shows:
the high school speech department needs a community member speech team coach,
recent high-stakes math scores at both middle schools were lower than anticipated, and
the safety inspection of two of the four elementary schools got a �C� rating in December.
Your committee will need to bring the community, which is comprised of 50% families without children in school, on-board with the need to present the district�s schools in the best possible light. Local businesses see advantages of their district being selected as a best all around school district and are promising financial contributions to aid in preparation for the May visits if the school district provides them with reasonable requests. What you really need, however, for long-range support of initiatives to address these and other concerns is for community members to vote on a bond issue that would reconstruct district boundary lines and bring additional financial resources to your district by bringing additional students into the schools.

You are preparing to participate in the first meeting of the task force. The superintendent is chairing the task force and has asked all members to bring a 10-12 page written draft of a proposed plan to address:
One of the three areas of concern that surfaced in the recent needs assessment.
Highlights of the district and its schools, using but not relying upon school and/or district report card data from the pre-activity to showcase the schools.
Suggestions for using online components to assist in marketing the district and its schools.
Draft a proposed plan that:
Addresses all three areas.
Addresses internal and external communication, including the use of online components.
Helps move the community from the state of awareness to one of commitment in order to meet schools� needs, improve communications and marketing, and hopefully pass the bond issue.
Includes an outline of the remarks you will make when called upon to present your plan to the other task force members on a separate page. Be sure to tactfully address the advantages and disadvantages of having to move quickly to compete in a scenario to which the school board has already committed the district.
Length: 10-12 pages
Include your Assignment Preparation work: web link to the report card data with three paragraphs of narrative
You may use a bulleted list by month (February-May), a chart addressing the three considerations above, or any other format you believe fits the task.
Minimum of 5 resources
Your proposed plan should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts that are presented in the course and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your work should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards. Review APA Form and Style.