New London — With just a handful of days left in the school year, the district administration and Board of Education are already focusing on next year as the city continues its transition into the state’s first all-magnet school district.

At a Board of Education workshop Wednesday night, Superintendent Manuel J. Rivera presented a draft of a strategic operating plan for the 2015-2016 school year — a detailed, 20-page document that outlines the ambitions of the school system and spells out what will indicate whether the district succeeds.

“Our plan provides clarity of purpose and keeps all of us focused on the initiatives and work that we believe is essential to building a great regional school system,” Rivera wrote in the plan’s executive summary. “Our plan identifies critical actions, deliverables and/or milestones that enable us to monitor or track our progress and accomplishments, and make adjustments where necessary.”

The operating plan identifies accountability, capacity building, academic excellence, operational excellence and parent engagement as priority areas for the district, and establishes 10 district improvement goals, including:

[naviga:ul]

[naviga:li]Ensuring that students read at or above grade level by the end of third grade,[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]Meeting or exceeding an 80 percent graduation rate by 2019, 85 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2021 (the current rate is 63 percent),[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]Reducing the district’s chronic absenteeism by 5 percent by the end of the next school year,[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]Increasing the number of graduating seniors who enroll in and successfully complete the first year of a post-secondary academic program, and,[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]Reaching and maintaining magnet school enrollment target of 25 percent out-of-district students in each magnet school.[/naviga:li]

[/naviga:ul]

The plan also calls for the district and board to update the district’s policy manual, hire a firm to assist in putting together a comprehensive facilities master plan, develop and implement a district safety plan, and study ways to improve the district’s student-based budgeting procedures.

Rivera and his staff will provide quarterly reports to the Board of Education and the public to track the progress of reaching the plan’s goals.

The Board of Education, at its previous workshops and a retreat last month, have provided input to the plan, Rivera said, and the district’s central office staff will continue to amend the draft operating plan before it is used as a focal point of a two-day administration retreat scheduled for later this month.

Getting the entire school system — including administrators, teachers and parents — to row in the same direction will enable the district to fulfill its vision and expectations, Rivera said.

“The idea is to have clear goals that the board embraces, that you hold me accountable for, that my staff and I can work with as part of what we’re expected to accomplish, schools are improving the same and we have a common understanding so everyone is on the same page,” he said.

The 2015-2016 school year will be the third year of a three-year strategic operating plan that was mandated as a condition of the state’s direct involvement in New London Public Schools.

By Feb. 1, 2016, Rivera said, the district will hold stakeholder meetings and complete a new strategic plan for 2017-2020.

c.young@theday.com

Twitter: @ColinAYoung