The vision of the San Antonio Independent School District is that the District will be the first urban school district where all students achieve above state and national standards, exhibit personal growth, and serve others in the community. Informally, we have used the African proverb, "It takes a whole village to educate a child" to describe our vision. Our vision is both inclusive because we believe the entire community must be involved in public education and specific because our success depends on our commitment to the education of each and every child in our schools. We believe that, by involving everyone as learners and as teachers, our students will improve their learning skills and knowledge and as a result will show gains in their achievement scores.

Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, noted, "The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in the organization." His contention about a learning organization is one that we continue to take very seriously. More than any other organization, a school district must draw upon and encourage each person's capacity to learn. Our mission of education is one that requires us to think about learning, not only for our students, but also for the teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and other staff members who work with them. To this end, we believe our district must offer rewarding opportunities for our students, our community, and the members of our organization to be lifelong learners.

In this plan we identify the needs of our District. Meeting them requires us to change. It requires us to develop the capacity to act with flexibility and vision. It requires us to develop the skills, strategies, and attitudes to transform the District into a community of learners. At the same time we know that each success comes with much hard work and the pains of uncertainty, of living through mistakes, and of constantly dealing with the change process. In this context we offer this plan of our efforts to improve the academic performance, and thus the opportunities, of our students for sustained learning as we continue to reculture the San Antonio ISD as a community of learners. We see our plan as a commitment to an ongoing processes of change and of continuous learning.

All the campus and district improvement plans include the elements identified by the Texas Education Agency and planning guidelines in business and education. Each plan contains a needs assessment with findings, long-range goals, campus or district performance objectives, strategies and initiatives, specific activities, the resources needed and staff responsible for implementation, a time line for implementation of the strategies and activities, and formative and summative evaluation components. We have also integrated the seven goals and objectives for public education as presented in Section 4.001 of the Texas Education Code.