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Mattoon
CUSD #2

Making a Difference One Student at a Time

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1st Day of School_Aide & Student Walking Together

About MCUSD2

Mattoon Community Unit School District is proud of its six schools: Franklin Preschool, Riddle Elementary, Williams Elementary, Mattoon Middle School, Mattoon High School, and LIFT Central Illinois. We are honored to employ approximately 500 staff members and serve over 3,100 students and their families.

Let's Talk Leader in Me

MMS Green & Gold Day Group Picture

Our Approach

MCUSD2’s approach to learning and leading is founded on the belief that all members of our district and community have unique talents and meaningful contributions to make.  Those beliefs guide our commitment to “making a difference, one student at a time” as well as an ongoing effort to continually learn and grow.

MCUSD2 believes aligned systems create the best outcomes for all members of the learning organization.  As such, each building organizes their work within aligned systems of Academics, Culture, and Leadership. Annually, buildings work collaboratively to create articulated goals specific to their most important priorities in each system. For each goal, the team selects two strategies to implement and monitor weekly on a shared scoreboard. Through a defined cadence of accountability sessions, we discuss the outcomes we are seeing and make adjustments in real time.  This allows us to use the power of the whole organization to make progress toward continually improved services for and with our staff, students, and their families.

Day of Service MHS Student Playing at Franklin

Leadership

Our organization is collectively committed to developing highly effective leaders who make a meaningful contribution to their schools and community.  To accomplish this commitment, we work from a place of shared leadership, where everyone has an important role to play and job to do. We teach students to lead their own learning, to monitor their own progress, and to set their own goals. We equip staff and families with ongoing learning and cultivate meaningful partnerships.  We encourage service and provide intentional opportunities for all district members to serve twice per year, as well as incorporate service into their lives outside of school.  We teach highly effective practices, guided by highly effective and timeline paradigms, so that students and staff are well-equipped to make their unique mark on the world.  These efforts define what it means to Lead in Mattoon CUSD2.

MMS Learning Walks Greenhouse Worm 2

Culture

Our district’s work on culture supports high-trust and shared leadership through cultivation of talents, appreciation and inclusion of diverse voices and perspectives, and holding ourselves to a standard that every person’s voice is heard and potential is affirmed.  This work shows up in the physical spaces we collaboratively create, the messages our buildings and environments send explicitly and implicitly, and the way people feel while in our schools.  We work intentionally in creating a safe space for student voice, where leadership roles and opportunities are designed with specific students in mind, and everyone has an important contribution to make on action teams.  Through direct leadership lessons, time devoted to developing the whole person, and leadership events, we celebrate a culture that is better when we are all empowered to make a unique and meaningful contribution.

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Academics

We are committed to ensuring growth and proficiency in a system that strives toward academic excellence.  Through competency-based learning, we work toward meeting students at specific present-levels and subsequently design targeted instruction designed to help them grow. Annually, goals for literacy and math describe where we are, where we want to go, and what we will do to get there. It is the work of every student and staff member to make those goals reality.  As such, students are equipped with habits, practices, and paradigms to lead their own learning through goal setting, monitoring, accountability partners, and celebrations. Staff are also equipped with the professional tools and support they need to personalize their professional development journey. We believe everyone can learn and grow, and we are committed to providing opportunities for them to do so, every day.

Let's Talk Stats

75

Years of
Excellence

64

Student Lighthouse

Team Members

7

Lighthouse

Coordinators

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12%

Overall

Growth

MHS Learning Walks Brain Teacher
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