I would like to call the May 13, 2019 meeting of the Derry Township School Board
Communications and Community Engagement Committee to order at 4:59 p.m.
and ask that we go around the room with a roll call just to identify
your name and your role on the committee for the record
and also note that the meeting is being recorded for public purposes.
So Lindsay Drew, board member and Chair of the committee.
Melinda Curran
Citizen Advisor.
Sorry, that's louder than I thought.
Corey read it as an advisor and resource
citizen Advisor actually commissions as an advisor.
Dan Frank, representing the administration.
And Tricia Steiner, School Board member.
Thank you.
And John is in the building and will be joining us momentarily.
Approval of Summary Minutes.
Did everyone have the opportunity to review the minutes
that were attached and emailed for the March 25th?
I put 17 on the document,
but it was 19 currently operating two years in the past
minutes.
Any corrections or notes for that?
Okay.
If I could have a motion to approve, please some of
Tricia and Donna on favor of approving the minutes.
I and has.
Thank you.
Moving on to unfinished business.
I just want to take a quick moment at the start of the meeting to recognize
this is our last meeting of the 2018 2019 school year.
And with that, as of June 30th, two of our citizen advisors
will be coming up on the expiration of their terms, which is
Melinda and Anne.
And I was fully prepared.
So I got here early and this is what happens.
I had a little, you know, note thing for you,
so I'll have to connect with you to get that.
But I just wanted to acknowledge publicly how much we appreciate
the time that you've spent, you know, on the committee as citizen advisors.
And as you're aware, since we've been doing the work
on the Citizen Advisor program, document that the application
will be coming open for refilling the vacancies.
And I hope that you'll consider rejoining us for another term as citizen advisors.
And if that is something that you're interested
in, please do
let me know ahead of time as we're going into it
so that we can anticipate your application.
But I appreciate the feedback and the time that you give to this,
and you've been on this committee for a really long time and I appreciate that.
So thank you very much for your willingness to
to join us.
Next item
is the Meet the School Board Director event.
I went back and listened to the meeting minutes from last time.
And, you know, we've been talking about this each time
and I feel like we can't really land somewhere
in a way that it seems to be most productive
to making it a successful event and,
you know, identifying the proper venue, the proper format to do that
as we head into this next year with it being an election year,
despite the fact that the current board members
who are running for reelection are uncontested.
It is still an election year.
And so I don't want there to be any
misconception or, you know, the wrong perception,
an image given for why would we be why we would be doing that.
So I'd like to open it up to the conversation
of that full committee, you know, for your input.
But one of the things
that I was going to suggest is that we tweak the goal of the meet
the school board
director a little bit and roll that into one of the committee goals
for the next year and make it more an expansive of how can we
how can we expand upon
the communications between the board members and the community
and and create that dialog and place for it
from an information perspective, talking about the things on the website
through, you know, various functions that people should expect to be able to,
you know, interact and also promoting attendance at meetings.
Can I jump in for a second?
So at the last moment in the last meeting, I had this idea
and I didn't know if this was a good venue for it. But
what you just said, I was thinking of
using the meeting to sort of explain how community members
would come in and if they had a concern, broach that subject.
I don't know if that happens in another place at any given point
in time, but for me, for example, I would be totally overwhelmed
if I had a question as to like who I go and who I approach when I go in there.
Do I contact somebody ahead of time? What?
When am I supposed to speak?
How am I supposed to speak? Those sorts of things?
And so I thought maybe we could sort of do say a mock
score meeting.
And I know you guys have a lot of things on your agendas,
but I maybe address the different ways
that you can address the board because there's a community feedback form.
There's two opportunities for public comment in our public meetings.
But then there's also the grand like that larger scale of
when you have an issue or
anything that you want to bring forward the chain of command that we follow
and at what point in time something is raised to a board level
and understanding, you know, the function and authority
of the board,
I think that'll be very helpful.
I don't I think there's a lot of people in the community who don't know
not only the chain of command, but what the role of the board is
and is not, which I think would be helpful.
Did we did we scratch the idea of of
of having the meet the event at back to school nights.
We didn't scratch it but I feel like it's been something that you know
kind of continually goes on and we say, well, how do we address
anyone who's not a parent and, you know, getting them in and out?
How do we
set parameters around, you know, what that looks like?
Do we have the space and availability?
I know some of the parents of high school students explain like back to school now,
you can hardly even get in what you want to get in in that time frame.
So adding more or less, you know, adding time before or after,
would we see interest in that?
And I do have a little bit of an update
on that because the last meeting I was asked to go back
and consult with my fellow administrators to see if it would be possible
to plug seamlessly into the things that they're starting to think about for
for back to school and at all three levels elementary, middle and high school.
The principals have indicated
that they would be more than willing to make that opportunity available.
Some already have a forum where they have tables set up
for community groups where like the school resource officer.
So it's just a matter of of adding another space for board members to be present.
And, you know, there is a formal time for some of the things
like at the high school but certainly there'd be some some time ahead of time
that if board members were willing to be there, some of those things
and there's more informal conversations, could could take place.
But to your point, we also talked about that's great for those folks
who have kids in those buildings because it's an additional opportunity.
But we're still looking for some other venue or opportunities
for constituents who might not have children in the district,
but yet are still our constituents and should be aware
of what the school board does.
You know, and I think would be probably the most reasonable is to assume
that we're not going to have anything that everyone's going to come to,
but have certainly utilized the events that the administrators feel
we could tack onto and then realize, okay, well, what are we missing?
And then do something smaller because I would still love to do that.
So now that we have that update,
which I felt like that was
one of the sticking points that we weren't being able to really
move forward with this because we didn't
know, you know, what the opportunity was inside of those events.
Maybe we do
continue forward with the back to school night
and taking advantage of the opportunity with the administrators and having,
you know, an area there setting that I think we had talked about the like,
how do you become a school board member and what does the school board do
and and frame it from that perspective so that we're not getting into
any type of student or constituent discussion
in that environment and then maybe continue the goal
and switch it more from a meet the school board
director event and make it more, you know, school board
awareness or, you know, interaction
with the community and start focusing on how that is.
But then it would give us the opportunity to reach at least the parent student base
and then make it to vote to go for it.
And one of the things we had talked about, and I'll continue to recommend
if we look for a separate sort of opportunity, is focusing on January
since it is the National School Board's Month and School Board director.
Appreciate.
I just think there's a logical tie in there.
So if we have something that's mainly geared towards families
during the back to school period, which is and will be September,
we might
look at something else in the fall, but then we'll certainly have something
in early winter at a time I think just makes natural sense from a PR perspective.
And one thing we can do this is Henry's is the parents like myself.
We don't have kids in the district anymore.
There's friends of Hershey, P.A.
There's the Hershey moms have have big audiences that you could
still say, if you want to meet the school board, you can come.
And it might be better for you guys because the parents will be so busy
with their kids that they won't be able to attack you at the stance.
But they'll see you, which is half the battle.
Right? They know who you are and right?
Yeah.
I'm trying to think of big community events like one is Taste of Hershey.
That's February there, right? Or is it more.
It varies from year to year, depending on the venue.
Mm hmm.
I see a lot of empty nesters or people
I don't see during the school year at athletic events.
They're there. They're like, Oh, you still exist.
You don't carry kids.
You you really miss contact with them.
That would be that's another that I notice.
Others, I have a question about what we like.
Do we currently have anything in place
to communicate with the constituents that don't have children in the district?
Or is this like our one thing that we're looking to?
I mean, I know there's Facebook and I know there's, you know,
normal elections and that kind of thing, but is there anything else that we do
as a district to reach out to those members of the community?
We do have a couple of things on one and something that a version of might be.
What we want to do in terms of the school board is both the superintendent, Mr.
McFarland, has a quarterly Java with Joe, which is open to anybody, a
parent or not, to come in and talk about education concerns
they might have about the district just learned.
So we have we have those opportunities.
And there was another one I just went completely blank on in terms
of putting something like a piece of paper or a newsletter.
We discontinued those several years ago for cost concerns,
but were just as recently as this morning was having a conversation
about what are some things that we can do
to sort of
not necessarily newsletter but have some kind of some things
that are a little bit more geared towards that second tier of artists.
I think that we could also ask the township
in their weekly newsletter to include, you know, something in there.
Yeah, they've been
they've been really good in terms of helping us with certain events.
I'll reach out to them, for example, kindergarten registration, right.
And they do that for all community. Yes.
So I can't imagine a scenario where they wouldn't be willing
to put that out there and that certainly reaches that, you know,
further
through the standing column
or link in there like school board news, just the link that goes to our website.
Everything is on the website.
But do people yeah, do they theoretically know?
But how often do they go?
I wonder if we if we could have an active link on their e-newsletter
that just goes to the school board for our just brings them to our web site.
Just to remind folks that aren't tuned in?
Oh yeah, their website. Everything's on it.
Just an idea.
Yeah.
I mean,
I was just going to say we did have
on the climate survey that we did recently this fall,
we did reach out to constituents outside district.
There's a separate spot in the survey for community
sort of community members that weren't parents.
Now they had to go to the website or they had to hear about it
from word of mouth.
I know I taught a couple of and we sort of said it was in Missouri
Township, you newsletter, you know, in the township.
Correct.
And that was another example of of how they've been a good partner in that.
The you know, obviously their audience is geared
a little more broad than what is typically our.
I'm wondering to if maybe like the sun might give us a little blurb
every so often, just because I know on the live community events too
I think yeah I don't think they charge for just listening events.
They cover our meetings,
of course, always a little blurb every other twice a month.
If we say it enough times, the readings before maybe Monica
would pick up on it and write a story
or we get Dan to pitch that to her.
Well, I like the idea of
moving this from August probably to a post election
just because it would avoid the appearance of impropriety.
I don't think it would.
No one would intend to have it that way,
but I think it's probably cleaner if we move it back to January or February.
We always run the weather issues, right?
So if there's a weather issue.
But and I think I think your point is very well taken about,
you know, we need to almost rebrand This is not meet the school board.
It's not really me.
Tricia reached out to me, Don, and we're going to say, Hi, I'm so-and-so
and this is who I am.
I think it's it's I don't know what we call,
but it's almost like getting to know your school board.
The school board, as opposed to the board members.
The collective 9101 everybody wants to know.
And I think that that's where maybe we could do it.
You know, looking at back to school night in September, if we had,
you know, an area instead of the back to school nights, any of its branded.
And we come out it with the perspective of the collective group as a school board
and not individuals I think and take that then
we don't run into the issues of you know, any individual.
Right, right, right. Yeah. Everything you want to know about your school board.
But we're afraid to ask. Yeah, Yeah.
Like some kind of thing like that.
Don't we have.
And we have students,
school board members in the high school at the high school level, too.
So what if we got them involved and sort of had that maybe create
the presentation or something
so then they can take a little bit more ownership of it too?
I think my only hesitation is, is that
school board reps don't come in until the start of the school year.
So we're looking at this for back to school night.
We would maybe only have two meetings if we were lucky before.
You know, from the time that they become school
board reps until we were having that night. Yeah.
But we could still potentially use it as a way to engage with them
and bring the student perspective to it
and to let everybody know that we have representatives
from the high school that sit on the school board, right?
Because ultimately we may not meet again as a committee before
these would start happening because we don't have
the committee schedule set for next year.
And we didn't meet as a committee this year until October for the first time.
So we would already be into the back to school time frame, you know, for that.
So I think from the perspective of the committee and the goals and,
you know, measuring, have we achieved, you know, what we set out to do
is that, Dan, if we can secure the space, you know, the back of school nights.
I consider it secured.
I mean, I kind of presented it more as a leading question,
like the school board would like to be more involved.
How are you going to accommodate it more than
can you would you?
Right.
And then I think in that format, too, it allows that for nine of us,
for those of us that have kids in school, you know, for some of us,
if it's elementary school, we can still go get to do
back to school night with our kids.
Yeah, we don't all nine of us don't have to attend every single one.
Right? Absolutely. And insufficiently.
And just to mark your calendars,
we're just now starting to schedule events for next year, obviously.
So at this point in time, I only have one submission
from the building shut, but it looks like September
the 12th is when the middle school has requested to hold theirs.
So that's the only one I have in yet.
And so that may change depending on other things that get scheduled.
But if you want to
write that one in pencil, that looks like it'll probably be the first one.
Okay.
And we'll kind of go off the
narrative of using it from the school board perspective
and talking about the, you know, role of the school board and.
And PSB has
has good materials about that, right.
That we've used in various forms before.
So I think it's just a matter of tweaking those.
And again, that makes it helps erase any appearance of the being political.
So and Tricia and I are both
liaisons for PSB and so we can even reach out to the PSB
rep and see if we could get some of the materials and information for that.
So you have something to hand out.
Parents are so busy they can just grab them
and you could even do like a little bullet point of what
who the board members are, what they do, how they're elected to something.
Right. Easy to read.
Do we have a is already a made flier on the communication process?
I know for the athletics they do For the athletics.
All the teams get this flier saying if you have a problem,
you go with your coach and you go to the athletic director.
There is an.
Yes, we have a we have.
Things like where it actually lives.
We have we have a one shot it.
We have a one seater.
That's a standalone, right.
That we use as a handout.
But it's also included, I believe.
And I don't I can't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure it's on all student
handbooks as well as the flowchart of if you concerned about transportation,
where do you start? And then the flowchart of.
Like where we go Bus driver Transportation director Jason.
Right provides the phone.
Number that would be would be helpful as a talking point.
Okay.
So since we are meeting as a committee between now and then,
maybe from the board member perspective, you know, maybe the four of us can work
together to schedule, who can attend what ones, and pull together the materials
and make sure that we can communicate the information appropriately.
Perfect.
And we can come up with I'm sorry, I was just going to say in terms of
if you're willing to look at the PSP materials, I'll be updating that
that flowchart of that one pager on if you have questions and concerns,
of course we'll do that probably in July, so they'll be done well in advance.
Okay, great,
great.
I got to say, we could probably I mean, you can among us
and we can probably come up with a couple of important bullet points in terms of
the community feedback form, letting people know, you know,
where and when the meetings are and what the format of the meetings are.
And particularly that we have this distinction between the public comment.
There's a public comment Section four on the agenda.
Then there's a public comment section near the end of the meeting for something.
It's not on the agenda and let people know that, you know,
you're certainly welcome to come in with the whole protocol is in terms
of the time limit and introducing yourself and your address and that as well.
You know, I think
I agree it would be
I think it would be wonderful if we could really up the attendance
in our board meetings, you know, to get more folks here to speak up.
I think, you know, because I always find it
probably one of the most valuable parts of our meeting.
So if we can kind of kind of be demystify, so to speak, and
and really make it much more, the people can come up to talk
or reach out through any variety of avenues to get to the board.
So I think that that would be wonderful.
I think that will be also be the time frame in which
the applications for citizen advisors is open.
And so we would also be able to promote that as well at the time.
So okay, then we'll move forward with that,
which kind of takes us right into our next item,
which is the 2019 2020 Committee goals.
You know, this year we looked at
reviewing the different areas of the website and making suggestions
on how to make it
a little bit more accessible for information
there, meet the school board director event and then the Citizen
Advisor program.
I think that we could continue the Meet the School Board Director event
only rewording it, you know, to kind of go towards our community goal
as we transition past
the events in September,
trying to write these notes down
because I always end up having to listen to the whole meeting again to remember
and then
the Citizen Advisor program materials.
You know, we're going to be reviewing
that next on the agenda for the recommendation
to send it to the board for approval and then have a, you know, rollout.
So I don't see that being
something that's going to, you know, continue as a goal.
And then we add the website section, which we've been able to review
a few areas of the website which I hope
have continued to be helpful for Dan.
But I wanted to open up and see what
everyone thinks,
because remember too, that based on how we set
our goals, helps drive when we're setting the committee dates for next year.
Do we need to meet, you know, what frequency
do we need to meet in order to be able to achieve those goals?
One item I'd like to bring forward from the administrative
standpoint is to take another look.
It's been several years since we looked at the policy
that governs the distribution of materials from outside entities.
There's lots of gray areas, and every time I think
we've got every little thing covered, something else comes up.
So I'd like to have the opportunity to review that policy
and see whether it's any changes
that the board would like to have, and that would then give me guidance
on how I give a yay or nay to some of these material requests that we get.
Regarding the website.
I mean, I use the website a lot.
I find it, I find it.
I usually can find what I'm looking for.
Rarely am I pulling my hair out,
but it's such an important tool.
I wish there was a way that we could like.
One of our goals could involve just expanding upon
what we're already doing, but trying to get more people.
Could you keep data on how many people are going to the website,
how to continue to try to increase our reach
and make sure that every family is
comfortable and knows that that's your first go to?
And then secondly, there are a lot of
groups and this may not be our jurisdiction,
but I would love for us to really encourage more website
adoption,
not only by teachers but by groups, because the biggest nightmare
for parents is when you're not really sure what's going on,
whether it be, you know, sports or clubs or music,
if there could be some minimal stuff that we can
just pass on the importance of
utilizing the website for not just not just you, Dan, and,
you know, the school, but I mean, I know that most teachers do have a site
to varying degrees of, of helpful information,
but so many times I'll be like looking for something quick
for like a club or something and you just can't find it
and just it's just not there.
We're just more and more reliant on it.
If more and more groups would say, Hey, we want to have a web page, I don't know
if that just makes more work for you or if there's some way to
make it not be more work for you, but still have the inverse.
Actually, one of the strengths of the web service that we use is
so that it can be decentralized.
So although I have overall content management,
it's set up in such a way that, for example,
you mentioned the teacher site so that you can have multiple
different types of content creators and editors at various levels.
So we have made the availability of, of space on the website
available to club advisors with various degrees of success.
For example, I think the Key Club is one that does have a fair amount of staff,
but there are other clubs that just like they really don't have a student to do it
or the teacher just doesn't have the time to do it.
So we can certainly revisit that and make sure that they all know
because advisors change from year to year.
Yeah, I also wanted to I'm
for the PTO pages.
I know that the elementary school does a pretty good job of keeping updated,
but the middle school one even was in the leadership
at administration level and
then the PTO, there's there's confusion about how to change that.
So the information in there is really outdated
and the picture is on both the middle school
and the elementary school is like from the eighties.
So if we could just maybe get an more
updated PTO
pictures, involvement
and information, I think that would be helpful too,
because a lot of the information that comes out,
the PTO is only on the Facebook pages,
but there's a good number of parents that are not on Facebook
and that specifically choose not to go on Facebook.
And there's actually more and more parents that are making that choice.
So if we can make that information also available somehow on the
the website, that would be helpful too, I think.
Are there any guidelines for various groups
or are other guidelines for teachers what should be included on their web page?
Yeah, the teachers have have a minimum standard they need to meet and the keyword
there is minimum because that was a negotiated grade thing.
So the minimum really for them is is just their contact information.
I was actually going to say the middle school PTO page
hasn't like the lists of the contacts is from 2015 2016.
So yeah so.
What the club.
What we need there is, is simply the content provided to me.
We don't
let the PTO or any of those sort of other organizations
that aren't directly district run have direct editing capacity.
So they need to provide the information to me for posting.
The elementary does a pretty good job of that
unless several years we haven't had that coming in from the middle school level.
So just send them your way. Yeah.
All right. Got it.
Thank you.
Would like for clubs that are affiliated with
with the school clubs or club sports, music, whatever.
It'd be nice to have guidelines. Minimum.
We can't make it required, but minimum suggested guidelines.
And there's. A tickler.
There's the rub.
Because I'm in an area that's
I work out a lot is the athletics
and you have the whole gamut of some some sports coaches
value that and put a lot of content on their site for parents.
And then there are others that it's
there's nothing to be black and we don't have a minimum
standard for coaches mainly because most of them are not up.
Some of them
are limited service kind of contracts.
They're not they're not staff folks.
And so if you look, you can kind of tell who are teachers
because they're familiar with the website and comfortable we're using it
and they put a lot of time into it.
I've talked with our athletic directors over the years
about that some,
you know, and that's where they give me the content
or give me an idea of what kind of content they want will help them with it.
Some have taken us up on that offer, others it's not a priority.
So unless we put ourselves in as a district in the position
that we're going to mandate that and make that part of their
their coaching contract, that's probably not going to change.
Yeah, well, if we just have a if we come up with the minimum guideline
so they leave it to they know that this index is soft
expectation or it's a, it's another means of communicating
because they all need to improve communication.
I know a lot of them are using remind 1 to 1
and team SNAP and all this other things but it would be nice
just to if we could come up with something for them as a reminder.
And all the clubs too.
Yeah.
And the teams that are at the middle school too are, are not accurate.
Those are also outdated.
So I know, I mean I, I, I don't like to put more work on people,
but if there's just a way, even from a district administration level,
I don't want to put more work on you either.
Dan but if we could just have at least basics.
So then from represent.
Can you can you give me a specific of what team is.
Updated like for sixth grade hurricane?
Oh, that.
I'm sorry, we're talking athletics.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry. I'm sorry. I was talking about that.
So then it sounds like there's still some conversation or,
you know, ways that, you know, areas of the Web saying
we've hardly scratched the surface, just know what we've done in these meetings.
And so maybe there is some benefit to continuing to,
you know, review, you know, one of those sections or pages
and identifying that one of the factors of Dan was
you were waiting to find out when the new version, a new template
of a site was going to be available because things would be changing.
Well, and that's kind of a
we find ourselves in a chicken and the egg scenario.
I didn't want to do a whole lot if there was going to be massive
changes coming out. And so
in terms
of the things that were brought up here, but that's something I'm going to work on.
The new template, getting it implemented over the summer months.
Okay.
So maybe we can continue this
as kind of an ongoing portion of the meeting that we can, you know,
keep looking at that and continue to find ways
to make suggestions.
Yeah, I'd definitely be in favor of keeping that as a, you know,
a goal type or standing item only because it's so important
and it's only going to become more and more important as a main source of.
And it's so fluid. Yes. All right.
I mean, I'm I'm on the website almost every day
looking for something random.
I would agree to just because as a parent, having to have Facebook for a PTO
and then the reminder for the teacher and then what other app
for something else, and then you really just want to find out
like what day tomorrow is or if it's
if it's Trojan Day or silly Saturday and you're kind of going through them all,
just being able to know, okay, if nothing else, I can go to the website.
Right, Right. That's helpful. Yeah, I agree.
Yes. Or what cycle day it is, especially after a break.
Oh, my gosh.
Especially if it's a break
where like the elementary school was off at the high school and.
There's again, the rub.
We've never figured out a good way to
handle cycle days because it isn't something we can automate
because we might miss school for a weather thing.
Or like you said, we have a summertime, we're in secondaries in
and an elementary sort of or vice versa.
So short of somebody being tasked with going in the night before and adding it,
we haven't found a good way to to put cycle days. I'm
so that gave us three goals.
Yeah that's
okay then
moving on to review of Citizen Advisor program materials.
So we reviewed the other documents last time
I hadn't gone through them, you know, extensively and looked at
how do we want, you know, to see that develop
and become a reference guide and then also tied into the conversation
of the website that some of the information
seemed to be
duplicated, you know, across the various documents.
So let's condense it down, simplify it, and then be able
to have information out there.
And so what I did was take those information,
take those other documents that read more as like
the one that have the application
and all of those things with it and put together
the document that's a citizen advisor program information for website,
which gives an overview of the program information, the committees with the
descriptions as they're listed on the website
for each one of the individual committees and then application information
and, you know, guidelines around the program itself for ongoing information.
And then of course, as
members are citizen advisors, our appointed
that would be updated on the individual committee site.
The other one was the combination of the overview
program guide, which we would make as the orientation.
So when we would hold the orientation following
the selection and appointment process,
this is what would be given kind of as that here, here's your resource guide
as a citizen
advisor, regardless of what committee you're on, understanding that
some of the committees are going to have things that are more specific theirs
and that we would defer to the chairs of those committees for connecting.
But we would be able to go through this
as a welcoming introduction and take away item
at the orientation using the information that is approved
within this to build out like a PowerPoint kind of presentation for that.
So I consolidated that information based on our meeting minutes and notes
that we've made in the various documents.
So let's start with the
program reference guide of the code and just open it up
to see if anyone has an information that you felt was missing
or that could be expanded upon or that we wanted to take a look at.
This is the one for the website.
No, the program like the orientation guide, your annotation guides, are you
one thing you'll note that we did you know put in there is in regards
to the absence and filling the vacancies in the way that that carries forward
and then just general expectations of what to expect
as a citizen advisor regardless of which committee
does that refer to the two years of their.
If you missed three meetings during the two years or three meetings
during one year,
I believe it's during the one one year
because we only meet like four or five times.
So if you missed three meetings, I would reduce that to two
because we usually some committees meet monthly.
Okay,
I would just put the year on it
because business will change as the board members change.
Just a final reading.
What says the current board
members wrote sort of this on a glance so we know if it's updated.
Oh, okay. Well,
and this will not be posted anywhere, but will be given
once appointed.
So it would be you know, it will need to be updated
on a yearly basis anyway.
But it doesn't hurt like it doesn't hurt
to put a written document only for new citizen advisors.
Right.
Okay.
I think for a generic
for generic purposes, I think it covers
the nuts and bolts.
Yeah.
Let's just say I agree
with anyone.
Anything else on there?
You did a nice job condensing everything.
Okay, then we'll look at the
program information page for the website,
which is the other document,
and this is what
we would be suggesting or asking Dan on the actual
district website under
the school board section,
Understanding Committees
and Citizen Advisors
say I only had one note there.
The second paragraph, the end says,
Why am I doing this?
The recommendations of these committees will in
no way supplant the responsibilities of the Board of School directors,
but the experience and expertise
of the citizen representatives will be respectively considered.
I think we met respectfully, but me respectfully will sit there.
But when I was reading it, I my guess was that maybe that was just a typo.
Yeah, but as I,
I think
I actually just copied and pasted that from the other end.
So I wonder if we've always had, I think
respectfully respectively would read, but I think respectfully it makes more sense.
Yeah.
It's funny when you read things, you don't pick up on that
because like in your head, I probably just read like a survey.
Okay,
Anybody else?
Any comments
to consider?
I just just popped my head as I was looking at this.
And over 18
we would consider having a student representative
to each subcommittee,
I don't know, member.
I, I've never seen that
in any of the various notes or literature
I've seen from, from the program over the years.
That's not to say it can't be done if that's the will of the full board,
because the whole program is a board program.
So certainly something
you can do with it, what you wish, because it's a creation of the board.
We could bring up at a full board level on adding a recommendation
for consideration for discussion, a recommendation for discussion,
then anyone else have any
comments?
Okay, so with the exception of adding the dates,
clarifying that it's within one year
on the vacancy and changing
to respectfully on that document,
I would then ask that we would move and approve
for this to go to the full board level and on the next agenda of the
school board, meaning as a whole, we would present this
and ask for approval for the board to proceed.
So second.
Thank you
all in favor.
I know.
So some you can vote to two so that we know that you're okay with it.
I know it's not a binding thing,
but you don't have to feel like you can't participate in that
because if you were really opposed to it, I would want to hear that, too.
All right.
Thank you.
And thanks around for the time
in reviewing this and conversation that we've had around it.
I don't want to
make the process
in the program more complex or difficult than it needs to be.
But I think I just felt like I couldn't get my arms around,
how do we make this like a meaningful, worthwhile
experience, you know, that people want to participate in?
And how do we utilize the feedback of citizens
more effectively?
So thank you for that.
Okay.
Moving on the district website review, we're going to talk about the
highlights tab, which is like the headline information currently on the homepage.
It's on the homepage of the district site is the one I'm talking about.
And then the contact page.
And so one thing
I will say that jumps out to me immediately, Dan, is the headlines is once
it goes beyond four or five things, it goes into the like of this.
So, you know, if there's a way to archiving this
because sometimes I'll be like, I know I saw it on the homepage,
the website, but three things are posted that day and it's now we know.
We're flexible with the number that we put there
because we have the ability to expand it as we wish.
And then I can expand the events on the side to keep the page balanced.
So we do try and keep things that are put up there that are have a time
associated with them, for example, a meeting or a concert or an event.
We always keep up until after the meeting has occurred.
There are some things that are a little more evergreen that may come,
come or go, depending how many other things there are.
Sometimes we do get the lulls were there aren't a whole lot of things.
So some things may
just frankly be you may see them once in a while
and they'll go away for a while and they'll come back.
One that I'm thinking of, for example, is the safe to say something.
They had that up there for for several weeks when it first came out
that it went away for a while, because we did have a number of things
that we want
to call particular attention to, and we didn't want to have 20 things up there.
And then it came back when we got into another period
where there weren't a whole lot of things.
There is no archive ability to archive it per say on the public side.
Or maybe archive is not the right word, meaning like allowing it
to kind of roll through.
So like if you're on a blog and you go page one, two, three, four, five,
so the top five or six things are always going to stay present for that.
You can, you know, tab through that.
The way the frame for that is currently
set up and I don't think we can change that even on the new template
is it's either it's all there, it's either active or inactive.
And we had a lot of inactive things in the background because they're going
to be reoccurring events. We just update them.
But yeah, it's, it's either on or it's off.
And I do want to point out
that the way our site is constructed with the, with the software,
everything you see on a page is actually little mini apps that are,
that are sewn together.
So that headlines app you see front and center on the district main page
that is also shared out to all the building pages as well.
Now it isn't the first thing you see on those building pages,
but it but it is there.
And the reason we do that
is so we know that people come to the website in different ways.
The home
page of the site is still the most commonly visited site.
The second most commonly visited page is the high school main page.
So we we want to have if it merits
the level of being on a headline, we think it's something that people
either should know or we hope they would want to know.
So that's the reason it's shared out to this other sub sites.
And the way it's constructed is once we enter that item, it's shared.
We don't have to go on to all five buildings and update it.
It's common.
And that's, you know, one thing that I know I always go to
is the home page because I have to do is type H into like any single browser
and you try to use user.
It's the first suggested site that I go do because I obviously go to it often,
but it's
like on mobile devices, it's not responsive.
And that's one. Thing a lot of Pynchon zoom.
And so if that's not something that we can.
Know that that will be one thing that will be corrected
and, improved on with the. Internet.
That is the case.
If it's possible to have a quick links tab where we have the headline similar to
how of the individual building pages are that you could get to,
you know, menus and
the various the handbooks
and that type of stuff, all in one place for all the schools.
But yeah, the the new template will be much more mobile
friendly than the one we've been using the last several years.
Okay.
The one other thing, too, is a,
there's a way to expand
the word link and maybe a feed from the Twitter and the Facebook
because so much information is shared out there,
you know, on there, if there's any way to kind of
make that a little bit larger.
Those are my comments on that.
Anybody else?
I just had a question as to how the highlighted items are selected.
Is that just like if I'm the band director, I say, Oh,
that's a band concert, or is that just an administrative decision?
It's mainly administrative decision, which we try and keep on
top of all the different calendars and special events.
I'd be lying if I told you that we didn't occasionally forget to give an extra plug
to something, or something sometimes slips under under the radar.
But we that's generally the intent is, you know,
we know there are certain reoccurring events.
We want people to be aware of
and there's certain special information that comes out.
Certainly the one that's going to be upcoming is it with budget.
So those things that we think are higher priority items
that we have additional information,
that's what we select for there.
And then the other thing we try and do is there may be things that might not
necessary rise to what we call a headline, but an event coming up,
If you're not aware of all those events on the left hand side,
those are hyperlinks.
So each each one of those events has a page.
So if you click on the link, you can get more information.
Now, again, that depends on
how much additional information we get provided
by whoever the staff person is who's responsible for that event.
So, for example, if it's a sporting event,
it's probably just going to say it's a home game versus Elmira.
But if it's something like the Walk for Clean Water, we embed the video in there.
We've got information about how to donate.
So it varies.
And there's an example of something that the water,
clean water that's both a headline and then also has its own event page
linked from the the calendar.
So this automatically pulling contact information.
No we have to manually.
Out of that and then it's like on the band spring concert it lists
contact information and location and the contact information is not correct.
I was going to guess without looking.
I'm going to think that that was probably
because we do a mass upload and it wasn't caught when it changed, but.
It's an employee. That's correct.
I know that you say that.
I have seen an improvement, though, with the Times added here.
So I appreciate that because I know before they were just saying like band concert.
Then you have to click in and go to find the calendar
and figure out what the time was.
So I like the time there. So thank you for.
And the one change they also made was
we didn't do but the software that we use
and it was it used to always be required to put an end time.
What we don't always know what time is going to be.
So sometimes we gasp and then we get it.
Is that meeting really going to be 2 hours or
so? That's that was just a change in the software,
but something that did improve the way we looked at times.
One thing I notice thing
when you go to the state connected tab and it's looking at the blogs,
is there any reason behind why, like the elementary school
over there, Cocoa Connections has a weebly off district site.
I'm just going to say this from the perspective as a web designer
and marketing person in my outside of school board profession,
it makes me really uncomfortable
because there is no disclaimer, there is no author listed.
There's it's if you go to the state connected
and then scroll down to cocoa connections and go to that.
It's a it's a weebly site, but there's no information about the author.
It's nothing that's district regulated.
It's off domain with pictures of students on there,
which is falls inside of, you know, the district, anything or do anything wrong.
I'm just worried about the security of it.
That was a
decision that was made by the folks who maintain that blog.
And it's a constant give and take we have internally in terms of.
Do they have the option for the function of using a district investor site?
PAGE Yes, because there is a blog function within their.
Policy that addresses.
There is. Not. How that.
And is that something
where would that live?
You're seeing this happenings that Hershey Elementary School Cocoa
Connections is not it's not a district site.
It's a weebly e-commerce site.
It's a free it's maintained hosted.
Yeah we please.
We have nothing like if all of those that maintains it
the administrators at the elementary school correct
but if they decided like if they left tomorrow
where they're like we wouldn't necessarily have access.
We have no control over that information.
Oh, I gotcha. There's no connection to it.
It doesn't
follow any other guidelines or information sharing, you know, that type of thing.
The only thing I will say is I think that they use this to connect
with other elementary schools and programs across the country.
I think my is that not right or set another platform that I'm.
Thinking that must be something else.
This is just a blogging endeavor.
Like, for example, the last one that was posted last week was about us
going for the school board appreciation Administration event
on there.
So my concern is that they're sharing great information,
they're sharing updates, information about how many people actually see that
or get to it or know about it, because it's not something that you use as
a reference item for posting on social media or any of the other events
or any of the other like vehicles.
I think this is a symptomatic of a larger
issue that we've wrestled with internally for many years now,
which is there are so many different tools out there and we've
heretofore always allowed our teachers and administrators
to pick the types of softwares that they felt.
Most comfortable for their individual classrooms.
And but when it's a site representing the entire school.
Understanding, that's kind of kind of where we are
and that's something that we've.
So who would I ask if I were.
Who would you ask?
Would like to want to inquire about how we try to pull that in.
I can certainly reengage that dialog.
But until there's no policy or administrative guideline, that's.
What I think.
Where would I have like
where would I look from a policy perspective that as a board,
if we were to revise a policy
to allow for administrative regulations to put parameters around?
Yeah, that that's a good question.
In terms of an existing board policy, I don't know what that would be.
I think it's more of an administrative guideline question.
But that has to connect to a policy.
Well, we have no.
I don't
I can't think of any policy that that would currently be addressed in that
at the moment.
Okay.
I think that.
It is part of a larger dialog that we've we've had because.
We have no information security on it.
Like it's not like our technology
department has all of the like there's so many safeguards in place for district
email, the district website, all of those things.
There are no student names attached to it, though,
but there's pictures
I would like to comment that it does make me somewhat uncomfortable as well.
I understand
teachers having their own sort of individual pages, but as a parent,
I didn't even know about this until right now.
So it makes me slightly uncomfortable that it's not a district run website.
Or its district run.
I think it's district Run is not just a district.
It is from a technology standpoint.
You know what what Mr.
saying is that this is a commercial.
They're using a different software than what we use for the district website.
So it's a link from our site.
But they have chosen to use
a different platform than the blog function that we have within hours.
Do the other schools use the blog function
in our our our software.
The only the only entity right now that's using the blog function
with and are web based software is Mr.
McFarland.
He does his superintendents by like using that.
Is there any
reason why it's I know it's the blog that's why it's our link.
The blog.
But is that something that should be on there, like individual schools?
It is it it is on their individual school,
but they could have it inside of a district page
like the superintendent spotlight is.
They've just chosen not to.
Is that for user friendliness?
That's for their comfort level.
That's what they.
There's a common mindset that you see.
See if you go to primary elementary,
oh, I see. It's on that.
It's on the on the ribbon stop.
Sorry.
Yeah, it's like on the navigation of that.
It has cocoa connections, but it takes you to an outside
the district page and it's been there since, well it goes back to January 2015,
so I don't know how long the blog option has been available on our website.
Longer than. That. Longer than that. Okay.
I'm not trying to make a big deal of it.
I know I'm not I'm not trying to be antagonistic.
I just have discomfort in it.
Being outside of the realm of District hub.
So perhaps
it's something we could look into.
Okay,
we only have a few minutes left it and else have anything on the headlines
Highlights tab Before we talk about the contact,
I got a couple of things on that.
Under the Stay connected the blog
for the assistant to the Superintendent for curriculum Instruction Assessment.
It hasn't been updated since 2017.
That's also an outside is also an outside one
and the blogs before that from 2015.
So I just don't know to even have it on the how relevant
it maybe is, because the last blog was why Twitter?
And I think probably Twitter is even
I know I'm getting old because I don't know what the next
platform is, but I know that Twitter is starting to fall by the wayside for kids.
But I will say I think in I haven't read this particular
blog, but I think for education
purposes, like there's a deep, robust world of connection
inside of Twitter for education, for professionals.
But I do think
it's worth mentioning, you know, just if we're not linked to it,
that it'd be something that's actively maintained
on the Contact US page.
Dan, is there a way that we can expand the button
for a complete form for the community feedback form?
I feel like oftentimes when someone brings something forward to me
as a board member and they're like, Well, how would I contact the board?
And I'm sharing that.
I either give them the ridiculously
long euro that goes directly to the form or I give them the link to the
contact page, and then say, scroll down
and under the building directory directories, the orange button,
like a little orange button on the right click that
and it it's I didn't know if there's a way to show more attention
to to what that form is because
the community feedback form because I think
you know even if we had more of like a headline around it
or if it also was linked to on the board for like
if you'd like to submit something to, you know,
reach an administrator and let it go to content,
you're on the elementary school page, you go back
up to district home
up at the top.
So yeah.
And now contact is.
Under one complaint. General one.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anonymous reporting.
I see.
Well, just click on contact us. So. Okay.
And then scroll down and it's that orange on the side.
Oh, the complete form. Yeah.
So it is.
And if there's a way that we can kind of differentiate that so people understand
that that is the vehicle for contacting administration and the board.
Sure. That's not a problem. Thanks
for your call.
It may be called community back form rather than complaint form.
Like the safe to say something is a missing
link is safe to say something
that makes sense.
Call it community feedback forms.
You know I've I've actually searched for that before and I found
and then also link to it just on the school board page,
like on the school board section.
It is.
But again, it's not it's not been done in a visible way.
It's a textual link.
So I'll town on the car.
Well, it says, oh, communicating with the board.
Right.
Well but that's, that's those are easy facts right. Yeah.
I mean even if it could just go directly to the form link.
Yeah.
I'd like to see it called community feedback. One.
I think that would be easier
to understand what it is.
And then I guess I owed you a follow up on this,
and I don't know that we ever connected with it from the bio thing,
but we just need to finish that
because that was one of the takeaways from the last meeting that
we were going to just identify the few questions.
Yeah, and I don't know whether the citizen advisors
are actually aware that the board did agree.
That that is an update.
Sorry,
after the meeting last time
we mentioned during the committee update
during the public meeting to ask the board if they'd be willing
to use our idea of submitting short bio information
and everyone was pretty much comfortable with it.
So we just have to
implement that by picking questions and selecting the information.
So thank you for that suggestion.
Anybody else have anything?
Okay.
Well, Dan, we've been trying
to get to these new entrant survey highlights all year long.
It's not gotten to.
It in the interest of time.
And I was actually thinking of suggesting this prior to the meeting.
You know, the document that we have is was for the first semester.
We're now almost at the end of the second semester.
So we're going to be doing this
for those families that came in during the second half of the year.
So what I can do then is just combine those results and give you an entire
year's perspective, not just what happened for those that came in the first.
So I know we don't have committee meeting yet of dates yet set for the fall, but.
The first.
Book that went on and let's do a year's worth instead of the semester.
Okay, now we're
to remove the
Citizen Advisor program document to the full board level
and we'll be able to see that
citizen advisors
that are continuing on with the time left in your term.
Once we get date set,
you'll be notified of those and they're publicly posted as well.
And then and Will and I hope that you will be
considering rejoining us
for another term to have a time frame for when the applications will go out.
Again, ten applications beginning September.
I want to say that right after Labor Day.
I think that's right.
I think it's usually early September with an end of September deadline
and usually the appointments may not work is the timeframe that.
Yeah, and
it's usually posted on it on the website and then it's posted on the Facebook page.
And last year we emailed it out to everyone in district email.
And that's one of the things too.
We also have linked from the township and sent to the sun.
If we have time for one brief informational item
I just want to share with you.
You may remember around this time last year we came to
and said that we were going to pilot a program called Zip Slip,
and the reason we came to that product was the Transportation
Department was looking for a better way to send out bus stop information.
And they arrived at that product
and then came and said, Hey, are there other communication
opportunities that we may be able to use this for as well?
And so I had to identify a couple beginning of the school year applications.
And then the thought was
that as the school year went on, we might identify some more.
Well, now that we've been through that process,
the Transportation Department wasn't
it didn't work for them the way they had hoped that it would.
And although Ziploc did work to get us the electronic sign offs
and some of those some of the district level back to school
documents, there are other documents that we couldn't use it for.
And a lot of the applications
we identified throughout the course of the school year
could either be met through a PDF attachment
to an email or just putting in the text of the body of an email.
So we've decided after a year of that that we're not going to continue
using zip slip.
And the Transportation Department,
excuse me, has identified a different piece
of software that they are going to be putting bus stop information on.
And it's actually pretty cool because it's a little more interactive
and they're going to be piloting that.
We're going to be sending that out to families
later this week, letting them
know it's available and online so they can play with it now.
And so they'll be familiar with that next year.
But basically the opportunity to keep the there, because I know
that's the one problem with zip slip is like you went away.
And so when I have to
try to remember the bus number to write a note or something, I couldn't find it.
What they're going to be using as an add on to this, to the software they use for
actually mapping out their bus routes.
So it's just it's going to be a Web page.
It's a Web based product.
And you go on and you will type in the your address
and then I'll give you the list for the bus stop that you'll be using.
So if it's in there, but it's.
Permission, so you have to log in right now.
Because bus stop information.
Is there. We didn't publish bus stop information.
Now, bus stop information is public information.
That's part of a
part of actually, it's a public document that's approved by the board every year.
So what it won't have is Billy Smith will be at this bus stop,
but bus information is public information.
So what this does, is it just if you enter in your address,
it will tell you the bus stop for your for your child
and we'll give you the time that the bus will be there
for elementary and secondary level and it'll be there year round.
So folks who move in midyear can use that are folks who were thinking of
of moving to the area, can use it.
So we'll be have information going out to families
later this week.
So if they want to go on and play with I mean, obviously
they know where their bus stop is for this year.
But if they just want to
familiarize themselves using the 1819 information, it'll be live.
And then in August, they'll populated with the 2019 2020 bus stops.
Interesting. Sounds good.
Thank you.
The reason I was asking that question is I know somewhere
in the policy
it referenced something about not ever
connecting like addresses to the bus stops.
Like the bus stops are listed, but they don't
like you can't take it back to a student.
So just curious, you know, from that perspective,
if someone is trying to find that out.
Yeah, there will be nothing on that site that says, here's the bus stop
and here are the 20 students that will be at that bus stop.
Okay.
You'd have to just put in the address, Correct?
Okay. Okay.
Thank you.
I'm interested to see how that works compared to the zip slip.
Yeah, the.
This will just be for transportation.
And nothing else.
Nothing else. Correct.
All right,
well, it is 6:06 p.m., so we will adjourn.
And thank you again, Citizen Advisors, for
joining me and being here for the school year.
This is our last time we meet for the school year.
It's hard to believe. So we are six or six.