Community members are encouraged to complete a survey to help Poughkeepsie City School District develop its Portrait of a Graduate. The survey is a key element of the project which seeks to gain community perspective into what critical skills and competencies our high school graduates need to achieve success.

Portrait of a Graduate is a process being launched by many school districts across the nation. It builds on Poughkeepsie City School District’s 5-year strategic plan pre-planning work initiated in 2019.

Responses from community members, past and current students, parents, and teachers and staff in 2019 included students having competencies that reflected financial literacy to competencies that reflected critical thinking and many more.  “By renewing our community input on the skills and competencies a PCSD student should possess will better inform Pathway Transformation, extracurricular, social emotional learning, Saturday Morning Lights programming and programming offered by community-based organizations,” Rosser said.

The survey, available online via a Google form in English and in Spanish, asks respondents for their affiliation with the district, to choose seven of 14 key competencies are most important and to fill in an additional two or three competencies beyond academics a PCSD graduate must have to be successful in college, the workforce and life.

“Once we get the surveys back, we will categorize and analyze the responses to pick the top seven competencies that we will use to create the portrait,” Dr. Janety Encarnación, director of college readiness and workforce education, said. “We will use that portrait to create a visual element that will be displayed in schools.”

The portrait “will serve as a beacon to guide our strategic planning,” she said.

Parents, teachers, students, representatives of post-secondary institutions (especially colleges and universities), business and organizations are encouraged to complete a survey. 

The deadline to respond is March 31.