MARSHALL — Marshall Public Schools Superintendent Jeremy Williams has established his performance goals for the 2024-25 school year, focusing on expanding Career and Technical Education (CTE) programming and the READ Act Implementation plan. 

“Those are just big areas we’re working on. CTE has been a focus of our district for the past few years, and then we want to continue to manage that area as we’re expanding from middle school all the way through our high school programming,” Williams said. “The READ Act is state law, and there’s a lot of pieces there that are going to take a lot of attention and focus this year. So, that’s why I selected that as a goal area as well.” 

CTE works to expose children to different career fields and paths, presenting them with a range of opportunities after leaving high school. Detailed under the plan to expand the program, Williams will work toward preparing new courses and programming for future years, work with community partners to connect with middle and high school students, and create more opportunities for college and career readiness overall. 

“We’ve really spent a lot of time focusing on how, when we talk about meeting individual needs, how are we helping prepare kids for the workforce,” Williams said. “Our mission is to prepare kids for success. If we’re going to prepare them for success with careers, we want to expose them to what different things exist in the community … The CTE work has been a piece of that.”

There have already been CTE developments implemented throughout the district. 

“We’ve got a lot of classes at the middle school, and we’ve added the CTI (Career and Technical Institute) center, thinking about programming for the high school,” Williams said. “It’s a big piece of the work we’re doing right now, and it’s meeting the needs of a lot of our kids. Our community has been very supportive of it. I want to keep that momentum going.” 

The state has recently implemented new literacy expectations for all students. Beyond getting kids to read at or above grade-level proficiency every year, there are now standards for staff, methods, assessment protocols and curriculum models to focus on the professional development for all students. 

“With the READ Act, ultimately, our goal is (to get) more kids reading at grade level. It’s looking at curriculum, it’s looking at intervention, it’s looking at professional development for our teachers,” Williams said. “It’s just making sure that we’re all working together and that kids are being successful.” 

Detailed under William’s plan for the READ act is to conduct analyses of current procedures on screenings and assessments and using that data to determine student proficiency and growth, making sure district staff has all appropriate and required training, and working with the Literacy Taskforce to monitor curriculum and budgets.