Lehighton Area School District held its first school board retreat Saturday at the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit in Schnecksville.

Dr. Christina Fish, Lehighton superintendent, called the event a “collaborative and empowering day for all.”

“We reviewed topics such as district leadership that works, effective board governance, how values affect decision making and operating effective school board meetings,” Fish said. “Additionally, directors worked on evaluating LASD’s implementation of the principles of governance.”

During the retreat, the board discussed its review of data such as Safe2Say statistics and spoke of the benefits of changing the format of monthly workshop meetings to include all directors and focus areas such as personnel, finance, athletics, building and grounds, policy, etc.

“The public is now able to observe the directors take an active part in discussing the needs of our students as communicated by our administrative team,” Fish said. “Directors have also had the opportunity to hear directly from our teachers of the wonderful things occurring in our buildings and classrooms.”

Lehighton recently began a year-long strategy of providing public access to curricular materials from 5-7 p.m. before each board workshop, which are held on the second Monday of each month.

The schedule of topics and grade levels for the curriculum review is available at https://bit.ly/40caksf.

Fish said another primary focus for the board is the review of district policies.

“The directors, as well as the public, have the opportunity to review policies each month through a first and second reading process,” she said. “It provides both parties with the opportunity to review and provide feedback to the policy committee for content changes.”

Mid-year review

During Monday’s school board meeting, Fish provided a mid-year update to the board and community, focusing on where she feels the district is strong, what it can improve on and how it plans to move forward.

“When you enter in a position and you’re not from the district or region, you don’t know what you are walking into, but we have really strong teachers, administration and staff,” Fish, who was hired in June, said. “One of our greatest strengths is our incredible students. They are committed to doing things as a group to improve their school community.”

Among the list of the district’s items to work on is K-12 curriculum development.

“We desperately need a clear and concise scope and sequence of our curriculum, starting at kindergarten and going to grade 12,” she said. “We need more curricular materials and assessment tools because that helps us determine where our students are.”

Part of what lies ahead for the district, she added, are a new district website, a revamped K-12 curriculum model, a social and emotional wellness model for students and new contracts for teachers, support staff and administration.

“We are meeting with our social workers to try and bring a more cohesive approach to how we help our students work through some of the things that are struggles for them,” Fish said.