School Level SMART Goals

SMART Goals are defined as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. Community members are encouraged to utilize this page to determine if their local community could benefit from implementing them. Consider these as guidelines for further discussion in the direction of tax dollars to provide ideal environments for children and citizens. Take your community's resources, economic and social strengths, and crime rates over the last 25-50 years into consideration.

Maximization of PCEs

Supportive Family Environment

Specific: Launch a Family Connectedness Program with monthly family game nights and workshops such as parenting skills and stress management.
Measurable: Aim for 60% of enrolled families to participate in 1 or more activity each academic year.

Trusted Friendships

Specific: Implement "Buddy Systems" that foster cross-grade student mentoring and crafted recess activities to foster social skills.
Measurable: Aim for 80% of students to report that they have 1 or more close friend(s) on surveys.

Supportive Non-Family Adults

Specific: Assign each student a teacher or staff member as a mentor for weekly check-ins.
Measurable: Assure 100% of students are matched with an adult. Aim for 70% of students to report feeling supported by 1 or more non-family adult(s) on surveys.

School Belonging

Specific: Create clubs, anti-bullying campaigns, and appropriate group therapy sessions that meet weekly for at least 30 minutes.
Measurable: Aim for 85% of students reporting, "I feel I belong at this school" on surveys.

Safe Community Spaces

Specific: Partner with local recreation centers to offer free after-school programs such as art, sports, yoga, martial arts, etc. in high-crime neighborhoods.
Measurable: Aim for 80% of identified at-risk students to be enrolled and 90% of them to report feeling safe on surveys.

Enjoyable Activities

Specific: Allow students to be involved with the formation of clubs that will meet weekly.
Measurable: Aim for 80% of students to report "I do things that I enjoy at school" on surveys.

Sense of Purpose

Specific: Integrate service-learning projects into curricula. Examples include community gardens, cross-generational pen pals, crafting and installing green power sources.
Measurable: 100% of classrooms complete 2 or more projects every academic year.

Achievable: Launch anonymous students surveys in grades 3-12 in the Fall, the perform progress checks via biannual surveys and focus groups. Use Title IV grants for mental health programs and community partnerships. Desegregate data to assess and address gaps.
Relevant: Launching these programs targets all seven areas of Positive Childhood Experiences simultaneously through school culture, policies, and partnerships. A rural school in Vermont launched a similar plan and saw a 40% drop in disciplinary referrals within 2 years.
Time-Bound: Implement evidence-based programs such as the ones listed by the end of 1 academic school year to ensure 90% of students report experiencing all 7 PCEs with a 25% increase in reported PCEs compared to baseline data collected in the Fall.

Minimization of ACEs

Universal Trauma Screening

Specific: Implement annual ACE screenings for all students. Screenings can be anonymous or proctored by a clinician.
Measurable: Screen 90% of students before the end of the first quarter of the academic year and refer 100% of students with ACE scores of 4 or higher to appropriate counseling and support services.
Achievable: Partner with local mental health providers to set up individual and group therapy sessions. Pending frequency of high ACE scores, increase availability of elective courses that support neurological stability such as yoga and martial arts.
Relevant: Early identification and intervention reduce the toxic impacts of ACEs in students' adulthood.
Time-bound: Pilot with 2 grades in the first year of implementation and scale up in subsequent academic years.

Trauma Informed Staff Training

Specific: Train 100% of staff in trauma-informed practices (TIP) to recognize and react to ACE symptoms.
Measurable: Aim for 80% of teachers to pass TIP assessments by the end of the academic year. Monitor suspension rates of trauma-affected students over the course of 2 years after staff training is achieved and look for a reduction of 30% or more in frequency of suspension.
Achievable: Partner with local organizations and established programs such as Trauma Sensitive Schools for workshops.
Relevant: TIP lowers re-traumatization and improves academic outcomes.
Time-bound: Train at least half of school staff within one academic year and 100% by the end of the second academic year.

Increase Availability of Tools for Self-Regulation

Specific: Give students the opportunity to choose a quiet "fidget" toy of their choice that is minimally disruptive to classes. If possible/applicable, charge the student government with the responsibility of creating and maintaining a "Zen Den" for students who need a space to self-regulate.
Measurable: Aim for 70% of students who use the space to report improved emotional regulation on surveys. Monitor referrals for a reduction in class-disruptions.
Achievable: Repurpose a room easily accessible/monitored by school counselors with sensory tools such as weighted blankets, art supplies, noise-canceling headphones, etc.
Relevant: Hyperactivity, aggression, and attention deficits are common side-effects of ACEs. Zen Dens and fidget toys can support students' self-regulation.
Time-bound: Assess Zen Den usage and effectiveness after one semester to determine if more should be created.

Crisis Response Team

Specific: Create rapid response teams including a counselor, nurse, social worker, as well as a supervised dormitory for students facing ongoing trauma, such as homelessness, neglect, and domestic violence.
Measurable: 100% of cases must be responded to within 24 hours. Aim for a 15% reduction in truancy within 1 academic year.
Achievable: Use McKinney-Vento Act funds to support homeless students.
Relevant: A rapid response team with a protocol and safe alternative housing prevents ACEs from escalating.
Time-bound: Train teams within 3 months and implement protocols within 6 months.

Socialization & Education of Children

Consolidate Curriculum to 13 Years & Reduce Frequency of High Stakes Testing

Specific: Proficiency in [World and National History], [Algebra 1 and Geometry], [Reading, Writing], [Physics, Biology, Chemistry, application of the Scientific Method], and [English, and Spanish] will be achieved for students at the conclusion of their Formal Operational Stage, which typically ranges from grades K-8.
Measurable: Students will demonstrate ability in the five subjects described above and individual growth through exams, projects, presentations, and portfolios.
Achievable: States and communities will use AI programs in conjunction with healthy guidance, structure, customized tutoring, and encouragement provided by teachers and school guides.
Relevant: In a nation that purposefully reduces quality of education for the lowest socioeconomic classes in order to increase ease of exploitation for the benefit of mega corporations, updating the education systems to reflect research-based practices such as the 2 Hour Learning model is essential to supporting our upcoming generation with the brain development and social skills to build and maintain healthy environments for themselves and their children.
Time-Bound: Restructure union standards within 12 months, rescreen school staff over the course of the following academic year, and execute professional development over the following summer and academic year. Update families about progress on restructuring and alignment to research-based practices on a monthly basis.

Adapt Electives

Specific: Based on community needs, resources, economic and social strengths, and crime rates, customize electives available and students' schedules to reflect the best school-day flow for their development.
- For example, at-risk students may benefit from starting their day in a physical education class to realign their nervous system and better prepare them for the rest of their school day. Schools in high-crime areas should have electives that support students' impulse control and defensive skills, such a Tai Chi, Yoga, Karate, and Jiu-jitsu. Communities that have specialized economic outputs should have electives that introduce students to those trades.
Measurable: Track truancy, class cuts, and graduation rates and aim for a 10% reduction in all three areas over the course of 2 academic years.
Achievable: Partner with local businesses and recruiters to find, hire, and train people who can lead elective classes.
Relevant: Red lining has created vastly different environments for children to grow up in. Public schools often pull from zip codes that are reflective of the racial and socioeconomic divisions, and hence their curriculum must be adapted to support those students' healthy development.
Time-Bound: School leaders will use relevant data to determine electives best fit for their student body within 3 months, use budget, fundraisers, and grants to build appropriate facilities [if applicable], then fill teaching positions over the course of 18 months.

Headquarters for Youth Operations

Specific: Students who have completed their Formal Operational Stage - typically students in 9th-12th grade - will collaborate with adult staff to piolet community projects, small businesses, and to study fields of interest from a central headquarter that offers a 1:12 adult to student ratio.
Measurable: Reduce rates of homelessness, food insecurity, theft, domestic violence, violent crimes, and suicide by 15% over the course of 3 years as result of projects and services provided by youth.
Achievable: Convert local spaces such as high schools to youth headquarters.
Relevant: Adolescence, a stage of puberty that typically launches at or around the conclusion of the Formal Operational Stage, is marked with a need for independence and purpose. Rather than fighting biology by forcing adolescents to continue compliance-based education, the youth headquarters would create a safe and structured environment for teenagers to apply/develop their academic and social skills to bring their ideas to life and fulfil their Esteem needs while simultaneously increasing availability of resources for community members to attain Physiological and Safety needs.
Time-Bound: Establish a timeline to identify a space for Youth Headquarters, fit it with necessary equipment, and to screen and higher staff with a wide variety of skills and expertise within 6 months. Update families on execution of goals set in the timeline on a monthly basis.

Availability of Resources to Support Physiological & Safety Needs

Community Garden

Specific: Create or expand schools' community garden to yield fruits, vegetables (especially potatoes) to feed at least the entire at-risk student population for two meals/day.
Measurable: Ensure 100% of harvested fruits and vegetables are sent home with students and/or used by school cooking staff to provide hot meals at breakfast and lunch.
Achievable: Collaborate with landscape architects, volunteer groups, and nonprofits to build and maintain spaces.
Relevant: Nutritious food is a physiological need blocked by a financial barrier for urban residents and most suburban residents as well. Having a community garden is both educational and alleviating to students facing food insecurity.
Time-Bound: Establish a timeline and budget to build the community garden and attain the appropriate equipment and seeds to yield nutritious food continuously at a rate appropriate to feed the at-risk student population.

Private Dormitory

Specific: Create a small, supervised dormitory for school counselors to allow access to students in need of short-term safe sleeping arrangements.
Measurable: School counselors allow overnight access to students five or more times per semester.
Achievable: Allocate unused spaces in or near the school for bunk beds and appropriate access to bathrooms and showers. Take donations to provide clean bedding and hygiene products. Use grants to set aside wages for on-call male and female overnight supervisors as well as a professional cleaner to follow up with refreshing the space and bedding after the students' stay.
Relevant: According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 29% of people experiencing homelessness do so as a family with at least one teenager and one child under the age of 18. In addition, fear of the abusive foster care system and/or betraying their caretakers to police leads children enduring abuse who don't have trusted adults in their lives to sleep in unsafe conditions - on the street, in parks, or in unsupervised shelters. Providing a dormitory space that can only be utilized on que of the school counselor ensure that students have a safe place to sleep and an action plan is in progress to restore healthy relationships at home.
Time-Bound: Establish a timeline to build/restructure space for the dormitory, install beds, bedding, washing machine accessibility, and hygiene products, and cleaning services within 3 months.

Sewing Classes

Specific: Introduce tailoring skills to students with appropriate motor skill development (typically 4th grade or higher).
Measurable: 80% of students should pass an Intro to Tailoring course with a grade of C or higher annually.
Achievable: Work with local businesses, shelters, and non-profits to schedule field trips to secondhand stores where students can choose clothes they will resize to fit themselves.
Relevant: There is a financial barrier to access to clothing, which is a physiological need. Tailoring skills would allow families to provide a healthy array of clothes to their children at little to no cost throughout children's growth spurts.
Time-Bound: Create/restructure a learning space and provide necessary equipment and material for a tailoring class as well as an instructor in time to launch the course for the next academic year (12-9 months).

Financial Wellness Course

Specific: Enroll all high school students who are employed into a hands-on online financial wellness course, which includes a series on setting up investment accounts, trusts, reporting financial growth, protection from fraud, opening a secure credit line, setting up appropriate auto-payments, creating and reporting monthly budgeting spreadsheets, and a series on strategies to stay on budget (such as the "cash envelopes" method).
Measurable: Enroll 100% of students who received work permits and provide students with at least 1/2 credit towards their diploma upon passing the course.
Achievable: Students can complete lessons at their own pace or use their advisory or a free period to complete their lesson for the day with adult support. Purchase or set up an AI program to review submissions and partner with trading platforms (e.g. Stash, Robinhood) to encourage students to open beginner-friendly investment accounts. Work with school counselors to identify students who will need exclusive access to their accounts (no parental access).
Relevant: There are financial barriers to accessing Safety and Physiological Needs; students earning money can start to build their savings and learn habits to ensure continued access to those basic resources.
Time-Bound: Setup the auto-graded online course within 12 months and launch at the start of the following academic year. Give families regular updates about the new course starting April of the academic year before it will be launched.

Access to Resources to Meet Love & Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization Needs

Love and Belonging: Cultural Connection Nights

Specific: Host quarterly "Cultural Connection Nights," where families can tailgate or setup booths in the school gym to share cooking, art, and storytelling.
Measurable: Aim for 50% or more of families to participate in each event and 90% or more of families to participate in at least one event by the end of the school year.
Achievable: Use Title III grants or PTA funds to cover costs of hosting the event.
Relevant: Community and intergenerational bonds are parts of Love & Belonging needs, which can be strengthened through such an event.
Time-Bound: Build a committee of 3 or more staff members to host events within 2 months and provide stipends if applicable.

Esteem: Student Voice & Achievement Recognition

Specific: Create a "Student Spotlight" program and publishing that celebrates diverse accomplishments of the student body. Students submit quarterly updates about their projects, passions, hobbies, and achievements to be highlighted in the publishing and/or assembly.
Measurable: Feature 100% of students in at least one spotlight per academic year. Aim for 80% or more of students to report, "I feel valued at this school" in anonymous surveys.
Achievable: Use existing community channels to rotate spotlights across classrooms.
Relevant: Public recognition and a certificate or publication that students can tangibly interact with fulfils their Esteem needs and boosts their confidence.
Time-Bound: Prepare members of the publishing staff and teachers to roll out program during summer training, including slides to show the diversity of achievements that students should submit, then roll out at the start of the academic year.

Self-Actualization: Passion Projects

Specific: Offer student choice "Passion Projects" where students design and present a semester-long project aligned with their interests.
Measurable: 75% of students opt in and complete a passion project within 2 years of launch and 70% of them report that the project helped them "grow as a person" on project reflections.
Achievable: Dedicate the equivalent of one class period of mentorship and support per week to project-doers.
Relevant: Self-actualization is fueled by autonomy and purpose, which are both pillars of a passion project. Weekly check-ins provide structure that younger students need to supplement their developing executive functioning.
Time-Bound: Pilot with a median grade in Year 1, then expand school wide by Year 3.

Rehabilitaion to Mitigate Self-Destructive Behavioral Patterns

Dangers of Sugar

Specific: Incorporate education on sugar cane and different types/levels of processed sugar as well as their impacts on human health.
- Hands-On Project: Grow sugar cane in science class!
- Hands-On Project: Launch a Sugar Free Challenge on social media in which students can commit to cutting out processed sugar for 21 days and vlog their experience.
Measurable: A series of 2 or more lessons on the health impacts of processed sugar should be incorporated at the elementary, middle, and high school levels within 2 academic years.
Achievable: Collaborate with the science teacher and utilize pre-made lessons and/or AI to develop educational content. Charge the student counsel with charting and monitoring the Sugar Free Challege Vlog.
Relevant: The prevent, reduce, and combat addiction to sugar, educate students on the health effects of processed sugar and alternative ways to add sweetness into their foods.
Time-Bound: Establish vertical and horizontal alignment of lessons within 1 academic year and launch the following academic year.

Intentional Behavior

Specific: Design a unit for middle school and high school students to engage in case-studies, research, and conversations about the patterns in how abusive behavior arises and how to intentionally avoid becoming an abuser.
Measurable: 100% of students identify and record 1-3 accessible nondestructive outlets for their stress.
Achievable: Utilize lessons/curriculum from organizations and nonprofits to structure the unit. Prepare school counselors to support students who are triggered.
Relevant: While many schools have added self-defense courses for their young women before they go to college, courses and conversations about consent and non-abusive outlets for stress are an important factor in preparing students for developing healthy relationships independently.
Time-Bound: Establish vertical and horizontal alignment of lessons within 1 academic year and launch the following academic year.

Youth Rehabilitation Connection

Specific: Establish a strong connection with a rehabilitation center that exclusively services youth under the age of 21.
Measurable: Connect 100% of opioid-affected students with resources and programs provided by the rehabilitation center.
Achievable: Partner with local clinics and the Town Hall to segregate rehabilitation centers by age so that impressionable young patients are not subjected to grooming while in recovery and can foster healthy relationships with similarly aged patients to further support each other.
Relevant: Purdue Pharma-style profiteering has exposed America's youth across all socioeconomic classes, genders, and races to addictive opioids. Providing rehabilitation instead of ostracization and punishment will support the youth in regaining their autonomy, which was compromised through means outside of their control.
Time-Bound: Identify a location or rehabilitation clinic of interest and charter plans to connect social workers and school counselors in the community with access to age-exclusive treatment within 3 months. Launch within 1 year.

Conduct of Research to Maximize Happiness of Citizens and System Adjustments in Accordance to Proven Patterns

Education, Implementation, and Incentivization of Climate Change Mitigation Practices

Research and Creation of Infrastructure to Preserve Life in Mass in the Event of Natural Disasters

SMART goal development and research done in collaboration with DeepSeek.

Report abuse