Innovation has long been a word to describe the Folsom and Rancho Cordova communities, from the high-tech businesses our region attracts to forward-looking city planning and arts initiatives.
Now the Folsom Cordova Unified School District is putting innovation front and center in planning for our future. We envision classrooms and campuses built for 21st-century learning, interactive tools that keep parents and students informed, and dynamic educational approaches that prepare students for future workforce demands.
A Broader Perspective on Education Innovation
Innovation includes modernizing learning and technology to incorporate contemporary approaches like adaptive platforms, project-based learning, and AI tools.
However, innovation is also a cultural mindset that calls for rethinking how students learn, how families and communities engage, how educators are empowered, and how leaders plan purposefully to ensure every child thrives in a rapidly changing world. This has never been more important than today, as society undergoes rapid technological change and shifting economic realities.
Folsom Cordova families expect their schools to be rigorous, flexible, transparent, and forward-thinking, and we are building strategies to deliver on those expectations. Here are just a few:
FCUSD’s new Facilities Comprehensive Plan FCP is aninteractive planning toolthat allows families and community stakeholders to explore and provide input on the future of school facilities. It’s innovation at its best, because it enables future-focused decision-making. The plan is proactive rather than simply reacting to growth pressures. It looks at both existing and projected facility needs and aligns those needs with community aspirations and educational goals—rather than simply reacting to growth pressures.
The FCP also improves transparency and engagement. Everyone can view data, offer input, learn about facility conditions, and read planning goals that were developed through multiple community meetings. All of this is now at your fingertips through an easy-to-navigate website.
FCUSD is also committed to data-driven decision-making. We have developed a process to collect and analyze every aspect of District data to provide a 360-degree perspective on our existing and future school facilities needs. This approach helps guide our student population projects, set budgets, calculate necessary developer fees, plan improvements to existing facilities, and more.
The Facilities Comprehensive Plan is live now, and I encourage you to engage with the site and let us know what you think.
Other innovation efforts include our focus on creating modern learning environments. We continue to make facility enhancements that create more collaborative, flexible, and technologically advanced learning spaces. Other enhancements have elevated safety and upgraded athletic facilities. When students have modern and well-equipped facilities, they value and engage more deeply with their education.
We also know how essential innovation is when it comes to how we communicate and engage with our school community.Our District is leveraging new interactive online tools and regularly conducting ThoughtExchange surveys to help us collect, respond to, and act on community perspectives.
Innovation Requires Collaboration
We all know what it’s like to create something new in a vacuum, it’s a recipe for frustration and failure. Innovation thrives in the context of community, when people with a common mission contribute their ideas, perspectives, opinions, and expertise to solve a problem or drive positive change.
That’s why I invite you to innovate with us. Our District leaders are casting the vision with courage, transparency, and data-driven decision-making. But we sincerely seek to take it forward in partnership with you, our community. All of us: parents, neighbors, educators, families, and community leaders, have a shared privilege and responsibility to invest in innovation today, for the benefit of the learners of tomorrow.
As a starting point, please take a few minutes to explore theinteractive facilities plan. Then set a goal to participate in planning conversations this year as much as possible, either via feedback online or in person.
Your support is crucial to expanding innovation in education, which will ensure the sustained success of our District for decades to come.
Erik Swanson authored this commentary published by Folsom Times. Swanson is the Superintendent of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.
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