A letter writer this week takes the School District to task for what could be called airing its dirty laundry in public.

The FHUSD Governing Board recently held a small retreat – a good way to start a new school year, since we have a new superintendent and three relatively new School Board members.

A common strategy used among businesses and other organizations is the SWOT approach or matrix – naming and examining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Because the School Board is a public body, such a matrix needs to be discussed in a public manner and in a public setting. The public’s business should be done in public. We feel the School Board was using good judgment in taking a look at the SWOT analysis and identifying issues in all four categories.

Rather than trying to obfuscate critical issues or weaknesses, the district has put a name to these categories and identified ways to hopefully overcome these weaknesses.

If they’re honest with each other, every school district has weaknesses. Would a young family be turned off from enrolling their child in a FHUSD school just because the School Board identified its weaknesses? Possibly.

Rather, we’d like to think that FHUSD is not afraid to tackle reality and work hard toward turning those weaknesses around. Another public body, the town’s Strategic Planning Advisory Commission, has a meeting set for 4 p.m. this Thursday at Town Hall. Attached to the agenda is a draft copy of a “comparative review of a few key metrics” for the Town of Fountain Hills. The preliminary assessment is divided into – yep, you guessed it – the four categories of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Even the Town of Fountain Hills has weaknesses…

A SWOT matrix can assist a board in exploring new solutions to problems and identifying barriers that will limit its goals and objectives. Every FHUSD School Board member would admit work remains to be done. And now they know what kind of work should be done this school year and beyond.