To Our Columbus City Schools Community,

Over the past two years, you have supported our students in a time of great uncertainty.  Your contributions, your voices, and your ideas have made us stronger, better, and more resilient.

It is resilience and persistence that have brought us to this point today ready to introduce our new Strategic Plan and Portrait of a Graduate to the entire Columbus City Schools community. Despite a global pandemic that has upended the world of public education, we pushed forward to complete this important work of engaging the community and establishing priorities with our students at heart but with students and families in mind.

Our plan includes the concept of “students leading the way.” We know our students are the future of our community. Our plan is guided by what they need to succeed and student voice will continue to be a focus of our work moving forward.

The Portrait of a Graduate is our North Star – our hopes, dreams, and aspirations for all students. Our community identified six attributes that CCS graduates should embody to ensure their success: 

• Adaptability
• Communication
• Creativity
• Critical Thinking
• Global Empathy
• Technology

With these six attributes taken together, our Portrait ensures we prepare students for success, now and in the future, no matter what path they choose to pursue after graduation. 

Our new Strategic Plan outlines the steps Columbus City Schools will take to achieve the Portrait of a Graduate and ensure that each student is highly educated, prepared for leadership and service, and empowered for success in a global community. 

We identified four priorities to guide our work over the next five years: 

• Whole-Child Focused
• Equitable Opportunities For All
• Strong Learning Communities In Every Region
• Authentic Engagement

To learn more about our new Strategic Plan and Portrait of a Graduate, I encourage you to watch this brief video.

You can also visit our website at ccsoh.us/PowerOfOne for additional information and resources. We encourage you to reach out with your comments and questions by emailing engage@columbus.k12.oh.us. 

In the weeks and months ahead, we will keep you updated on our progress, and you will hear more about the work that goes into accomplishing our goals and realizing the Portrait of a Graduate.

Our entire community – students, teachers, staff, families, and partners – have endured through unprecedented times over the past two years, which makes this work all the more impactful now than pre-COVID. We must be more intentional and more focused on the priorities at hand. The past two years have certainly challenged all of us in ways we could not have imagined. But it also proved to us that we are up to the challenge. 

A student fully prepared to lead and serve begins with one community pulling together for the benefit of all.  It will take the Power of One community joining together to set our students up for success. We are now more prepared than ever to meet any obstacle in the future head-on — and succeed with our Students Leading the Way.

Thank you, 

Talisa Dixon
Superintendent/CEO, Columbus City Schools