GLENWOOD SPRINGS — The Roaring Fork School District Re-1 will continue its work with an outside consultant to take the input gathered through a recent round of district “visioning” meetings and develop a new strategic plan for Re-1 schools.

The Re-1 school board recently approved a $12,500 contract with the Denver-based nonprofit organization Civic Canopy, which helped to facilitate community meetings in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale and Basalt this fall.

The sessions invited parents, students, teachers, school administrators and the community at large to address the strengths and weaknesses of district schools, and drew more than 960 people.

“That is probably, in the short amount of time I’ve been doing this, the most participation that we’ve ever seen,” Re-1 board member Richard Stettner commented in response to a recent presentation of the visioning process results.

“It shows the interest that people are taking with what’s going on in our district,” he said.

School district officials have since been working with Civic Canopy to continue to refine the information and begin developing a comprehensive, long-range strategic plan.

The group will also help the district develop a way to continue the dialogue and improve accountability within the district, according to the proposal approved by the school board.

That will include the creation of a strategic planning committee that will be in charge of shaping a “cohesive plan with clear results,” Drew O’Connor, project lead for Civic Canopy, wrote in the proposal. Community members are to be invited to join school district staff and board members in developing the plan.

“The Civic Canopy will work with district leadership to design an outreach and dialogue process … to delve more deeply into specific themes that emerged from the visioning phase of the process,” O’Connor said.

The strategic plan process is expected to begin after the holiday break in January and continue through May 2014, with a draft plan expected in April.

In the meantime, the Re-1 board intends to review the district’s mission and vision statement based on the results of the visioning report.

That report can be found on the RFSD Re-1 website at http://www.rfschools.com under “Important Announcements.”