The Video Guide to the Plan for Student Success

March 22, 2005 - At the March 15, 2005, meeting of the Wake County Board of Education, Superintendent Bill McNeal and Deputy Superintendent Del Burns presented the 2005-2006 Superintendent's Plan for Student Success. This document presents the financial strategy for the 2005-06 school year as well as a three-year plan for achieving Goal 2008, the Wake County Public School System's driving academic goal:

WCPSS is committed to academic excellence. By 2008, 95 percent of students in grades 3 through 12 will be at or above grade level as measured by the State of North Carolina End-of-Grade or Course tests, and all student groups will demonstrate high growth.

With every major financial item cross-referenced to an in-depth explanation, including business cases for each expansion item, the 2005-2006 Superintendent's Plan for Student Success is a huge document. The March 15 presentation is a step-by-step explanation of what drives the plan, including descriptions of the ways local funding is used to support our schools and the impact of state legislative mandates. Think of this video guide as "WCPSS Finance 101," a self-paced study aid that will help you better understand how your public school system operates.

How to Use the Guide

To make the most of the guide, download the PDF (Acrobat file) of the 2005-2006 Superintendent's Plan for Student Success. This is a large (22.82 MB) file containing a 655-page document, so it is best suited for broadband connections (cable, DSL or office LAN). Most of the March 15 presentation centers on the Superintendent's Message. If you have downloaded the PDF, go to Acrobat's "File" menu, select "Print...," and print pages 10-36 so that you may follow along with the presentation. We have also posted the Superintendent's Message to our website if you don't want to download the entire document, although you may find it harder to follow the page references.

You will need the free Apple QuickTime Player to view the following video segments. Right-click on the links to save the QuickTime files to your hard drive. Dr. Burns will walk you through the Superintendent's Message page by page and also make note of key pages in the reference section.

We hope you will find this a useful contribution toward the county-wide discussion of the future direction of the Wake County Public School System.

  1. Superintendent's Introduction (10:06, 8.8 MB)
  2. Deputy Superintendent's Introduction (5:30, 4.4 MB)
  3. Orientation to the Document (3:54, 3 MB)
  4. WCPSS Funding Sources (7:10, 4.9 MB)
  5. What Drives the Plan? (1:00, 761.3 K)
  6. State Funding (5:39, 4.3 MB)
  7. Local Funding
    1. State-mandated Compensation and Benefits (5:39, 3.6 MB)
    2. Student Enrollment Growth (4:02, 3 MB)
    3. System-wide Issues (1:23, 1 MB)
    4. Wake County Board of Education Commitments (1:16, 922 K)
    5. New Programs (2:57, 2.3 MB)
    6. Reductions and Savings (2:24, 1.9 MB)
    7. Local Revenues (5:20, 3.6 MB)
  8. Federal Funding and Conclusions (1:36, 1.2 MB)
  9. References and Details (27:06, 20.2 MB)
    • This is a walkthrough of the reference section of the 2005-06 Plan for Student Success, which follows the Superintendent's Message and includes detailed explanations of all of the concepts and funding requests introduced in the previous segments.
  10. Final Comments (10:06, 7.6 MB)