The 2019-2020 Staff decided upon four measurable goals that best encourage our unit to strive for success and best reflect the goals of the NJROTC program:
Goal #1: Unit-wide Community Service Involvement Within our unit, we focus intensely on giving back to and maintaining our community. We do this by leading and participating in community service events. Because it is an important pillar of our unit, we pride ourselves on our record of achieving 45 or more hours per cadet of community service within the academic year. Our unit has achieved this in the past two years, and will work to maintain our status as both a Distinguished Unit with Academic Honors (the highest award a unit at large can be awarded) and also as a dedicated member of our community, as hardworking cadets, and as individuals who recognize the importance of giving back to those who support us. While we are immensely proud of those in our unit who lead the charge with totals of hours reaching the hundreds, and reward them appropriately, we also work to get everyone involved. Because of this, we strive to have 100% of cadets participate in at least one community service event before the 30th of March, 2020.
Goal #2: Growth and Training of Junior Cadets (NS1) Our unit recognizes that without a strong foundation of junior cadets, the unit would not exist. Because of this, we focus heavily on training our Naval Science 1 (NS1) cadets as best as we can, so they can be set up for success within the unit and into the future. We do this by hosting training events, for everything from uniform prep and naval knowledge study sessions to drill practice. In addition, we aim to give them the lead when they are ready, as we acknowledge that students learn best when they are given the chance to become teachers themselves. Through these practices, we hope to attain the following rates of promotion in our junior cadets by the 15th of April, 2020: 100% to SA 80% to SN 60% PO3 40% to PO2
Goal #3: Fundraise for National Orienteering Championship Team Our unit is a high-achieving group of young leaders. Because of this drive for success, we are often invited to compete in national championships in different fields. For example, based on our outstanding performance in orienteering during the 2019 season we have been invited to compete in the national competition in Quantico, VA in March of 2020. However, this amazing experience is not without cost: we aim to fundraise $4,000 by the 1st of March, 2020, in order to finance lodging, food, and transportation for our three teams: varsity, junior varsity, and novice. We will do this by working with Cub Foods through their bagging program: cadets go to the store, help customers with packing their food. In return, many community-members donate to the unit. We are pursuing this avenue of fundraising because it has generated sufficient funds for other such endeavours in the past, such as a similar, if not greater-costing trip to the 2019 National Orienteering Championship Invitational.
Goal #4: Promoting the Importance of Leadership One of our main focuses within the unit is developing leadership potential in our cadets, freshmen to seniors. One of our goals this year is to increase the percentage of cadets taking on leadership positions outside the unit. In the past, 27% of cadets were leaders in any capacity (including student council, senior class council, and WEB), 8% were executive leaders (captains/president, executive board members) and 20% of positions of leadership in our school are held by cadets, extending from sports captains to the National Honor Society president. In the 2018-2019 school year, we began issuing an additional ribbon for cadets holding leadership positions outside the unit to wear above their name tag. We will continue this practice in the 2019-2020 academic year, as well as strive to promote the importance of leadership to our cadets, attaining a rate of 40% of cadets in the unit holding leadership positions outside the unit by the 1st of April, 2020.