Cumberland County School Director Rebecca Farley completed her 120-day transition plan focused on communication, school visits, and employee feedback.
Farley concluded the plan with temperature checks, asking people across the system the biggest concerns and areas where they were seeing improvement.
“Staffing and compensation was 26 percent,” Farley said. “Behavior, discipline, and support was 13.3, and curriculum pacing and testing was 12.9.”
Farley told board members the plan included monthly newspaper articles, routine email updates, weekly conversations with principals and supervisors, and newsletters tied to nine-week grading periods. Farley said the goal centered on predictable communication and visibility across the district.
“I do a monthly article in the newspaper,” Farley said. “I can converse with you weekly, and I converse with principals and some supervisors weekly.”
Farley also described multiple in-person efforts completed during the transition period, including advisory council meetings and visits to every school. Farley said the schedule allowed time inside classrooms and school events across December and January.
“I was in every school in December, and I have been in every school in the month of January,” Farley said. “January the second, I visited seven of the twelve schools, and the following Tuesday, I visited the final five.”
Farley presented results from the anonymous temperature checks, explaining they asked employees to list three things going well and three things not going well in their schools. Farley said responses were grouped into broad categories to identify overall trends rather than individual comments.
“They were asked to list three things that was going well in their school,” Farley said. “This was open-ended, so they were asked to list three.”
Board members asked whether future surveys could narrow board-related concerns into more specific categories. Farley said the initial approach intentionally stayed broad but could change moving forward.
“This was broad, and I asked three things going well, three things not going well,” Farley said. “Going forward, be happy to do that.”