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Steamboat Springs — Shalee Cunningham faces a tough proposition.

Nearing the end of her first school year on the job, the superintendent of the Steamboat Springs School District has said she wants to solicit community input about the future of local public education. But she faces a jaded audience. With a revolving door of superintendents passing through the district since 2003, several administrators have stepped into the role, asked for input and left their positions before long-term results could be completed.

For Cunningham, the solution to this dilemma - aside from her plans to remain with the district for the foreseeable future - is to take quick action and make community members and employees responsible for meeting the goals they set.

In that spirit, Cunningham hosted a three-day public workshop for community members to establish a set of ideals and plans for the district to apply to larger goals and policies in the district.

During a Thursday and Friday session of brainstorming and list-making, the committee agreed on a set of guiding principles and areas of emphasis for the district.

Those include "ethereal" goals that are loftier than goals created by previous districts Cunningham has worked with, she said. The first declares the district will prepare students "to be good stewards within their changing personal, regional and global communities."

Cunningham said her biggest realization from the two-day conference was that Steamboat has a good system already in place.

"What I learned about the district from this process is there is a high level of contentedness," she said, citing high performance, school safety and parent happiness.

The group was made of 18 community members, including Steamboat Springs School Board members, school personnel, parents, community group leaders and parents.

Sonja Macys, director of Yampatika, was among the group. She said she was impressed by the group's dedication to several lofty goals, including environmental issues and collaboration between the two other Routt County school districts.

"I came away from this thing feeling very hopeful about the direction of our school district and a strong sense that we were in a good place already," she said.

Concrete examples of how these goals will change the future or direction of the school district are not easy to come by. Cunningham said she was reluctant to give examples of how the district could implement the goals because she wants to leave those decisions to action committees.

California dreams

This isn't the first time Cunningham has created strategic plans for a school district. As a consultant, she worked with several districts in California.

In the Orinda Union School District, in Orinda, Calif., she created a district strategic plan that still is in place and on the district Web site.

Ben Lang, director of technology for the Orinda district, was one of the members who helped create the plan 11 years ago. He said the overall plan provided the district with stability and a sense of direction.

"It's a powerful process," he said. "It's been kind of, if you will, the constitution of the school district since then."

Strategic plans are revised every year, with the main strategic planning committee reconvening for one day annually to evaluate how the goals were met and interpreted. Lang said that as long as districts maintain their commitment to the plan, it can be a useful tool.

"I guess the major recommendation I would make is to keep it alive. Stick with it, don't let it drop," he said. "Every time you start developing different plans in the district, make sure it's connected to it."