The State Board of Education approved Thursday new Superintendent Mo Green's priorities for North Carolina public schools.
Green laid out a 37-page plan Wednesday to improve instruction, teacher training and student performance, among many other things.
Other WRAL Top Stories
He wants to raise four-year graduation rates from 86.9% in 2024 percent to 92% in 2030.
The plan also calls for a new teacher licensing system, more surveying of families and students, more access to career and college opportunities while students are still in school, as well as using artificial intelligence to make the state Department of Public Instruction run more efficiently.
Green said the plan will cost some money, but doesn't yet know how much.
That concerned some of the board members, including Treasurer Brad Briner who said the state has "a limited amount of funds" to achieve Green's goal.
But Green said he isn't worried, because he's formed partnerships and fundraised before at Guilford County Schools when they lost funding during the Great Recession, having to return millions of dollars in state funding back to state coffers to keep the state out of the red. In spite of that, Green still moved forward with his strategic plan, including a proposal to establish a science, technology, engineering and math high school. The district eventually opened the school in partnership with North Carolina A&T University in 2012.
"We said there, as I say now, the plan does not change," Green told WRAL News. "We may have to change how we go about doing certain things. We may have thought that there were this pocket, this bucket of resources it turns out that it doesn't exist. So now let's be creative in finding additional buckets, or different buckets, to make something happen."
Some goals may need to be delayed, he said. DPI has a team implementing the plan that will determine how much things costs, where the money can come from and when certain things can be done or need to be done.
Partnerships and fundraising are explicit goals in Green's strategic plan -- now DPI and the board's strategic plan. The plan calls for establishing foundations and endowments to provide students with services and even free college classes. Other partnerships would help provide student services, in areas like healthcare, or help students achieve a statewide goal of reading 10 million books.
Board Member Wendell Hall said Green's plan is different than other strategic plans he's seen in his more than fifty years in education, and he thinks it's concrete enough for things to get done.
"A lot of times we all know where those plans ended up, and no one would say a word about it," Hall said. "This thing is truly, to me, creative."
The plan officially launches Aug. 20, with a celebration at Neuse River Middle School in Raleigh and a tour across the state.