The December 17th communications and community engagement.
Is it need to wait and.
This time
it's.
We're going okay.
I didn't know if it was recording. All right.
Okay.
I'd like to call the Communications and Community Engagement Committee
meeting for December 17, 2018,
to order at 508.
And then if we could just go around the room and do a quick
roll call, I know some folks are probably still stuck in stuck in traffic.
So. Lindsay Tru School Board.
Tricia Steiner School Board.
Dan Today representing the administration.
Or in
is your microphone I'm.
Speaking to I'm.
Corey Reed, Citizen Advisor.
Ashley Ms..
Young Citizen Advisor.
Donna Cronin School Board.
Okay. Thank you.
Did everyone have a chance to review the summary minutes from the October
8th, 2018 Committee meeting?
Yes. And does anyone have any changes or anything?
Then if I could have
a motion to approve those minutes, please.
So moved.
Second, all those in favor say I
i any opposed
the minutes from October 8th, 2018
are approved as presented.
It's unfinished business.
The first out we were missing end to
the first item
on unfinished business is the meet the school board director event.
And there hasn't really been much communication
or discussion about this since our last meeting.
One of the things I wanted to just briefly discuss today,
because the meat of what we're going to be doing centers more
around the recommendations for the community to have on the website
and then the Citizen Advisor program documents.
But for the Meet the School Board
director Ben Dan and I kind of touch base about this
and we're talking about what's the feasibility of doing it right
and what are the best opportunities that we have to not
create another event to put on the calendar,
but still make it something that's accessible and meaningful.
So I think at this point we also address not wanting to make it political
and with school board elections being this coming year
for a number of seats on the board, we want to meet.
One of the things
we wanted to be mindful of is trying to do it before the primaries.
But in February, the ballot petitions opened up.
So I think that our opportunities are limited
to be able to do that and pull it together.
And there's just not a lot of things on the calendar in the dead of winter.
I think that we take a lot of risk with weather, you know, inclement weather.
And I wouldn't
want to see the committee put forth a lot of effort to try and plan something,
because if
there were to be inclement weather, it would be very difficult to reschedule.
So I was thinking about maybe we focus on trying to get it
planned for back to school nights
for the 2019 2020 year
at that point will still be early enough that we won't be close
to the general election and primaries will be over.
So it would really just be the current sitting board having the opportunity
to be in each one of the school locations for back to school night,
you know, for community members to come in and introduce and have that.
Because I know one thing that was seemed important was to do it
outside of the district office.
So I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on that.
I love the
idea of doing at the back to school nights because people are roaming around.
There's a little bit of free time and there's other displays,
and I think it's something we could easily
kind of fold in.
And I know for the board members it wouldn't be, you know, it wouldn't
exclude anyone from participating in back to school night with their own child.
Because if you had to, you know, excuse yourself for part of it,
you know, that wouldn't be earth shattering.
So maybe what we can do is plan for the next meeting
to discuss this more from the what do we want it to look like?
How do we communicate it?
How do we frame the notification so that it's not
a question and answer period, but more of just kind of a,
you know, engaging, you know, with folks and having them stop by
and then maybe in the interim,
Dan, you could help me navigate like how to get that
incorporated for each one of the buildings and.
Think.
Okay, could we put together a fake news
that we can have as a handout proposed to that could start dialog?
One of the things that.
GLINTON I talked about briefly was
there were some really good documentation that was pulled together.
I forget the exact date, but was prior to the last election
when the district posted a basically.
So you want to be a school board candidate
night.
Obviously, we wouldn't do things like Linda filed a petition, you know,
your signatures and all that.
But there was some good information from PSB about what a school board member does
and all that. So I think those two
so I think some of those materials on PSB that we use
there would be appropriate to have on hand is handouts to just
as people are interacting with you as neighbors
and they also get a sense of what it is
that you do as their elected official.
My only suggested to it just maybe to build in
maybe an extra ten or 15 minutes because I know the back to school
nights are the schedules are really tight, like there's no time at the high school
in the middle.
There's no time at the high school of the middle school.
I think maybe there's a little bit more
more room to work with at the elementary school, but that's the middle.
And high schools are like it's hard to set everything in.
So do you think tacking it on towards the end?
I mean, to me,
having more time on the beginning, right, Or
I know in my household where I was there at the very end, as far
or even I mean, at the middle school, there's like,
there's like a portion where you can go to the library
and meet some of the administrators, and maybe we could also be there for that.
And I think that's probably where it will fit back in.
I mean, I'll work with the individual building administrators because they do
set the agenda for their own individual buildings, meet the school night.
But I think that's probably more the natural fit rather than.
I'm just thinking about the high school, though.
I'm not sure. Yeah. Know, that's something I'll have to work with.
With Mr. with Mr. Smith on the matter.
What works with the format of of the other schools?
Because I only have an elementary student.
But, you know, one of thing I was thinking of too, in addition to the,
you know, how to run for a school board or be involved,
talk about the Citizen Advisor program because I think that the work
that we're doing over the course of this year
with the program documents and talking about whether or not to have
an orientation for new citizen advisors, that that would be a good review.
Maybe just having information and really talk about the role of a school
board director, not the individual issues or actions that the school board takes
to talk about the committee work,
how to be involved, how to communicate with the board.
I think one of the, you know, big things as individual school
board members is the chain of command,
you know, and being able to help communicate and guide folks
because often the flowchart is given out as here's
where you start as your first point of contact
and go through in the school board's the last point of contact there.
So maybe kind of reaffirming those things.
But so what we'll do then is
for the next meeting, kind of dive a little bit deeper into that.
My only hesitation on the frequently asked questions,
everything is unless we put together some type of document to,
you know, provide with that.
We don't want it to be like a question and answer session so much as just
introduction and and conversation,
because we wouldn't be doing any type of formal presentation.
Know, I'm envisioning, I think that based on what Donna said,
I mean visioning like a Florida says, you know, come meet your school board
then series maybe a series of questions on the flier herself like,
well, who's on our school board? What do they do?
Can they raise my taxes?
How do I get a hold of my school board?
These sort of like, you know, questions around the column,
the kind of people's interest to come in and try to get some answers about,
you know, who we are, what do we do and how do I get a hold of you and how do
I participate. Right.
The only downside ABC
of attaching this to the back to school nights is
I think that'll be very convenient for our constituents
who will be coming to those events because they have kids in the district.
The only asterisk I throw on to that is I'm
not sure how convenient that'll be for the others.
Percent of Arkansas are constituency that aren't
don't have students in the district right now.
Certainly they're invited.
Whether or not they'll feel welcome or they want to be
a part of that other event that doesn't directly engage them.
So there's one.
Thing that we could
do, too, and we'd have to discuss at the full board level
to make sure that everyone be comfortable with that additional time commitment,
especially if we're looking
at three buildings and back to school nights, is doing a community
geared one that was maybe at the library or something like that.
That would be able to reach the population
of community members who don't have students in the district currently.
And I know that's a big ask for each one of us, you know,
to give several nights or four nights with, you know, a couple of hours
in addition to everything else.
But I think it be worthwhile.
Another option, as I know, for the high school
back to school night, they always start.
If it starts at 630 at 6:00, they will do like junior
parents can learn about college applications or something like that.
We could always be available a half whole half an hour ahead of time
for community members, for anybody to come
and then hang around for any drop ins that are in between classes or,
you know, their kids have a study.
Oh, I had some, you know, blank periods for study hard.
It was non lab day or, you know, and then everyone would kind of
get caught up in the traffic and hustle and bustle that is back to school night.
Okay well I think that's something that will probably
Yeah I think we've discussed with the school board.
Okay then we'll circle back to that next time and hopefully have
some ironed out information to start planning the need of those.
Okay.
Now let's move on to the district website review on the community tab.
I had created the Google document, right?
Or the Google Drive for the Communications and Community Engagement Committee
that I sent access to everyone for,
and on that put working files
that will that cover
the documents that we're going to be reviewing for the citizen advisor.
But then also the website suggestions.
One of the things we talked about at the last meeting was making
sure that we were kind of focusing on different topics
because at each meeting for the remainder of this school year and committee
that we want to do is just take a look at one area of the website
and be able to just make any suggestions or something and then have
just provide that feedback to Suzanne.
And obviously it's not within our authority or our position
to say this is what has to change.
But I think just providing user feedback and being individuals
that are being represented or that are representing the community,
I think this is an opportunity just to be able to share that information.
So breaking it down for this meeting, we're looking at the community tab
and then we'll look at the school board and then like the homepage headlines.
So does anyone have an opportunity to review the
community of the website?
I know Tricia
put some information here in the Google document and I have some notes
that I forgot to put in the editing
when I was typing it into my own version of it.
So I didn't even like, follow the rules myself, but
we'll look quickly here.
Can everyone I know you won't be able to see exactly what's on here, but
we'll just go right to the homepage.
Yeah, I just had suggestions about
the order of how things are listed
because I feel like as a community member
or someone from Congress in the community,
it won't necessarily be the alumni first.
Like I feel like people are going to graduate
and they're going to be out of here.
So yeah, and I don't know if that's because it's alphabetical.
That's my guess. It looks as though it.
Kind of is, and it kind of
isn't because you see, we're alphabetical, but we have cocoa packs at the bottom.
And that outside of the web's. Exactly.
I say, okay, well, that makes more sense then.
But that's what that is.
Excellent feedback because
again, everyone sort of navigates differently or thinks differently.
So it's a good reminder sometimes to not just assume
that everyone's going to get that that's the way something is.
Or so I appreciate that feedback.
My first comment was because the website is not mobile responsive.
It's when you pull it up on a smartphone,
it you have to do the like pension's zoom.
And I don't know, just as a general website comment,
if we have the ability to have it be mobile responsive.
That is, we're going to be getting a new template.
That's something we'll be working on here in the new year.
And as part of that, it will be.
Okay because I know like when you go directly
to the community tab, it gives a bit of an outline here of
information that could be found in the dropdown parts of it.
So I think one of the first things is, you know, when you click on the community,
it kind of goes directly to the alumni page.
And that's a that's a function
of the way that current frameworks occur
on the template that we have in place is that may change with the new template.
I'm not entirely certain. Okay.
Because one thing that
I would just recommend is if there's if you're able to have just a community
page as the landing page to support the, the dropdown sub navigation
would be to have kind of a
outline of the community section.
So everything's right there all in one place is a click.
So listing, you know, the alumni directory, I didn't know
we have the capability of having there be a, a form submission
for alumni directory to be able to just put your information right in.
Instead of individuals contacting the high school secretary
or the
principal's secretary at the high school, individually or by email,
it seem like that may be a way to streamline
how that information is submitted or encourage folks to do it all.
You know, in one spot,
just like the transcript requests.
Right, with an online forum?
Absolutely. That's a great idea.
I also thought it'd be helpful to have the Hershey Alumni Association link
bigger or more prominent
because it's
and I feel like you can miss it easily and there's a lot of good information
on there.
If you are an alumni and who manages this in.
The Hershey Alumni Association
section.
Yeah, like the separate page, the Hershey Alumni Board.
There was a one of our alumni had actually initiated that.
And I don't know how it's linked on there, but frankly, I haven't visited
recently to see
how up to date they've been keeping it.
Yeah, it doesn't seem
to be too up to date.
Says classes of 2013 2018 on the on the header.
But now if there's anything.
It was definitely a volunteer.
Effort but it's not a district managed.
Site. Correct.
And that's one of the catch 22 that I want to discuss
in terms of of the community section, because there are other
like I said, we have cocoa packs on here.
Trojan Foundation is also listed.
So these are
sort of quasi district affiliated information
we have there in addition to the stuff that is directly district controlled.
So that's one of the tricky parts I have in terms of and Missy
Missy Conyers here in the audience, she helps with a lot of the
the data entry and day to day management of the website.
That's one of the
tricky things that we have to navigate in this section that's sort of unique
compared to any of the other sections that you're going to find on there.
So we could look to expand the things that are on there.
We could look to contract them because for example,
this is something we don't have direct control over.
Okay.
And do we have the capability of having any kind of notification
that when you're leaving the district website
and going to a different link, that it's notice
that there's a notice saying that this is not a district maintained
like you're leaving the district site.
Now we can put disclaimer information above any links
not on the dropdown but say textually for example on this community page
that you're proposing, This is sort of the overview page,
but we don't have the ability to have a pop up, for example, that
when you hover over the link that it's
going to say that or when you go to click it, you'll get a pop up window.
We generally transport them to a different window or a different tab,
but that's about it in terms of there being overt notification.
Okay. Which of these takes you to another link?
Is it cocoa packs and Trojan Foundation of the two
conditions actually on that district. Yeah.
Currently it's it's housed on our server and we do manage it
but that's something I've been encouraging the church and foundation to sort of
take more direct ownership of because one of the things
that they want to do as an entity is sort of better establish their own identity.
And the fact is that although they do support the district,
they are not part and parcel of the district.
Right.
And as the hack residency certificate, that's also internal.
Correct?
That's information because we do hand out several hundred
of those every year for for folks who are looking to do that.
So that's informational for usually alumni, but not necessarily.
So is that for students that want to go to hack?
Correct.
And that's
where I was thinking, Dan, just having that,
you know, on a community landing page, being able to,
you know, have kind of the quick links like all of the schools have where
there's just, you know, the options and maybe a bit of a description,
I think linking to Triton Foundation and cocoa packets and any of the other
organizations that support the district but are not necessarily part,
you know, of the school district from an administration
perspective is a helpful tool.
But to to even just kind of maybe even have a blurb
like if you didn't know Hot Cocoa Paxos but you were searching
for that type of assistance as a community member and went there,
I don't think you would necessarily know what it was.
And then also thinking about the fact that for your social media purposes,
being able to link to that community page and drive folks there as
kind of
notification of a catchall for information.
Well, I like that idea, too, because I think that helps address
on what I was mentioning about being sticky.
We could remove some of those things.
Then from there are dropdown, keep the dropdown
if we wanted to, just for things that are ours.
And then we could have that explanation above those other things
that these are community resources, these aren't links that we,
you know, these
we think you find these useful, but they aren't district operated pages.
We've got some of that boilerplate language in other areas of the website.
When we bounce folks out, say, for example, the athletic schedule.
Community links or community resources dropdown,
that would be completely separate, just community links for 20 resources.
And that's what I'm thinking.
And then we take them off the dropdown and we could add some of the others in.
And again, then we have that built in like above any of those.
We would note that these weren't district operated sites
and I think that might help address some of the ambiguity
we were just discussing and we could open up then to more folks
like I'm thinking, for example, Parks and Rec, the library, other community.
Yeah.
And so even if it was just kind of housing links to all of those resources of
of things that connect in with so went to the Derry Township site.
You know when folks have questions about taxes and where that's calculated
because that information is housed within the Derry Township talks site.
So to drive folks there, you know, any of the community programs
to Parks and Rec or, you know, just to kind of have a resource
so that you can find that information, you know, on one place.
I think that the way that it's been set up
is beneficial because you can get the information you need.
But if you can streamline it and not have all of the individual pages,
I think, one, it's easier for you to manage and to is just
more user friendly to be able to to access everything all in one place.
And this and following on that lines you know the other one of the other tabs
that there talks about community activities and events, the truth of that
little section is those are just
in essence, duplicates of the requests.
We get to hand out materials in the schools if it's approved for that.
We also hang it there.
But for example, we know the Hershey Public
Library has lots of events that are useful to our constituents
that don't make it here, and it almost makes it appear like it's
not a community event.
Whereas if we're linking over to the Hershey Public Library
from where this landing
type page or a resource directory
within that, then all they'll get all those events
when they go to the library page.
So I think it helps both streamline and expand our content at the same time.
I know one thing in my business with work because I,
I create and manage websites for clients that I constantly am
trying to drive home is to use the website as a hub of information.
So when things are being linked to from social media or,
you know, driven, that you always
try to put it on the website and then drive people to your website.
And I think, you know, one of the things we've talked about is
that traffic is relatively low on the district website.
And perhaps if we had these,
you know, kind of carve outs and consolidation of some of the information
that that might help folks to use this more as a resource
because they know, you know, even just for me personally, sometimes
I see that on social media, they see that on the website
that I'm searching here and searching there.
And it kind of can become a place
to house things where you're not having and then for, you know,
your time purposes and this is time purpose
to to only have to do it in one and then just use that link.
So we're encouraging people to go to the district website and find that.
Do you think it's worth you mentioned we're talking about alumni.
Would it be worth having
the alumni as its own little buttons since, you know, the descriptor says,
you know, reunion information, if there's nothing here,
it means no one's given us any information.
If it hasn't tab, maybe it would drive people to,
you know, an alumni dropdown and then you'd have, you know, class
of 2,012th Reunion or whatever and just have a little bit more traffic there.
Yeah.
Frankly the alumni one is is
troubling
is too strong a word but it's one we don't get a whole lot of.
It's not consistent.
We end frankly we don't get a whole lot of folks anymore
submitting their reunion information.
There was a time where that was
used by a lot of the classes to distribute information,
but many of them now have set up their own Facebook groups or things like that.
So I'll be honest, we rarely get anybody submitting reunion information
at this point.
Maybe we get one a year.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to do anything
that's not going to be utilized, but I know probably
with the popularity of social media now, a lot of things are on there.
I think a lot of classes have groups,
you know, that they're going to, but
it would be great that maybe if we had it built in that way,
that then we could encourage each class, you know, at least going forward,
even if they were just posting a link to their Facebook page, this was people
that don't aren't include in oh, let me check the website.
Let me check the website, see what's going on with my class.
Oh, there's nothing.
But if we had something, it could just look
more people in and just and just let the alumni association know.
Let your class leaders know you just put something on their.
The link I think would be useful for people who aren't connected.
I don't think that it would need to be,
you know, a priority or something that should be time consuming.
But I do think it would be, you know, that's probably where people,
if they're looking, they may start there.
And I'll venture
and perhaps I shouldn't, but I'm venturing an educated guess.
There's probably somewhat of a generational divide as well.
I imagine there are certain classes, say,
from the fifties and sixties that are probably more likely
to use the website versus those that are more recent years,
probably are
more likely to use social media or other platforms like that.
Right. Do we happen to know
is this directory in fact published every five years?
Do we know? I know. Okay.
And that's one of the notes I made here was to talk to the school
to see if they have plans to do another one in the future.
So that sounds like it was something that might be something
we might want to update if we're not really doing that right.
And I know one of the things the Trojan Foundation has discussed,
because I'm the delegate for the school board on the Trojan Foundation,
is trying to ramp up efforts to build better alumni relations
from for their, you know, purposes from a fundraising perspective.
But maybe that's something that ultimately,
you know, they would be interested in taking ownership of.
And then that's just something else that we could link to
from the district website, since it's not an administrative function
to manage the alumni part of it.
Anyone else
have any feedback or thoughts on, you know, various areas?
I liked the I do like the the volunteer and use of school facilities.
Again, you know, just having it all in one place
would be really helpful
because, you know, when someone comes straight to the district
website, it like their thought may not be to look underneath
the dropdown,
especially if doing it from a mobile device that,
you know, if you're going to hit the community tab
first, just having everything there
on a landing page and linking from there versus the sub navigation
would just,
you know, perhaps be more helpful and
user friendliness.
All of my concerns were the same
that have been mentioned already, which I think is good.
That means we're on the right track.
I when I went to the website being pretty candid, I only saw the alumni
and I thought, Oh, that's a very bare minimum information here.
And then I went back up and they did see the rest of it.
So I do think the landing pages have great.
Yes, makes perfect sense.
Okay.
And what about the volunteer form?
Is that easy enough for people to find, or should that be done by itself?
I mean, if there are links in other places.
Right.
So or perhaps it's within the individual school pages.
But I know that there's something you see
like on the from the very front of the home page,
you know.
And what are you looking for.
The volunteer volunteer resources, that page.
I know, I know like the year
I think it was on the home page as it is in the quickly right
like on the elementary page here for the primary elementary,
it's in the links and it takes you, you know, back to that page.
So I think each school links into
several places embed it, but it'd be nice if it was
more front and center.
Just just saying, I know when people are trying to do it, it's very stressful.
Oh my gosh, I got to get my clearances.
All my clearances. Yeah.
And then the on the web page and they're just like bopping around.
Just just an idea because that's one of the most common things that
a lot of people look for.
Right.
I'm not sure if I would
think of the community tap to be the first place to look for that.
I don't know.
I don't have a better offering as to which heading to put it into,
but I'm not sure that that's the first place. Yes.
And then it can you go back to the home page.
Where I did think that it used to be there.
Right.
We're kind of we're basically out of real estate now.
Again, this topic change a little bit.
We're really kind of out of real estate up here, but
there is a possibility, some real estate here Now,
this little app and it isn't an app,
there is has some limitations,
but it's something we can explore and again,
when things might change a little bit with what's a newer layout, right?
Maybe even where we are right now, we're kind of at a real estate swap.
Maybe the new one will give you some functionality that the headlines
like in this banner area right there.
There would be a quick links for the district home
in general
so that things that would apply to all schools.
And we can use the template that we're looking
at the sort of montage of photos that are
are there will become clickable.
So we can also create graphics
that we can occasionally slip in there just like a little billboard ad
that might catch your attention and we can rotate in and out
various things we want to call attention to.
I think when people look for the volunteer section, they go to contact us.
That's where I went
because I thought, Oh, this is where I'm going to go get information.
Actually, when I did, my husband did.
The residents certificate,
and we also went to contact us for that
because that was something I think we need to get information.
So we need to contact
them.
Are you able to add the
volunteer link into the sub navigation of the contact us as well be.
Able to do that?
We're just like, just add that to the menu for contact us as well.
So it's in two different what we should.
We should be able to to do that that it just
then references back over to where it's currently housed.
Because open records is there too
and then how to enroll under contact us.
So yeah we were looking
we've just figured it would all that's where you would go to.
That's really good feedback.
Thank you.
I lost that.
I was.
I've been navigating around here.
I lost the community page where.
That's not good.
At that time for home.
I was on it when I first when it first popped up, it was there and I lost it.
My only other comment
was just on the, you know, community activities, events.
You know, I was expecting to see school activities
and stuff that you would see on like that.
I was to the home page.
So, you know, if we're going to use
that as a resource for the rest of the community,
I guess I would want some sort of distinction between that
and what's offered by the school district, what's what we're sponsoring.
What I'm liking about the purchase that Lindsey seeing was referencing
over to all these different entities is then they can have their fence there.
So instead of us, I'm thinking this could almost go away as we currently know it.
So that way when it's registration time for the Baseball Association or something,
then folks can can see the baseball association.
They can put that information up because frankly, a lot of times
what those fliers are is go to our web page
anyhow so we can cut out one step for them.
Well, and just as we're talking about it, one of the things I'm thinking
of, you know, as a part of this committee is we talk a lot about the communications
part of it, but the community engagement piece is such a big part.
And I think
just as we're
talking about this, like Derry Township has the submission.
So every week when the newsletter comes out
by email from the township, there are communities
sponsored activities that residents can submit to the township.
And I wonder if there, you know, is some way or maybe it's by a form
submission to streamline so that we're not doing it, but
for the different athletic organizations to say, hey, we want to,
you know, get this on the radar somewhere and that things could fall there as well.
Because I do think that people probably overlook it
a lot on the township side because they're not thinking of it from
the township perspective so much as student
related.
You know,
So if you're trying to find so I'm thinking like any of the
like Boy Scout Girl Scout
records, that type of thing, being able to have an area
that that they could submit their links to just like Joya Sports
and make it community, you know, make it like a kind of an area
for community submitted information and not that that's anything
that the administration has to own the management of but maybe just.
Oh well.
Other than linking it there, like you don't have like you wouldn't have to,
you know, hold the PDFs and manage what's on there and and that timeline.
But maybe there's something that's just submissions for the month of January.
I would want to keep a very careful eye on
what was going up or being submitted.
There
isn't a link when a just a link to their resources be good enough or.
That's my
natural inclination is we know who these organizations are.
A lot of them released
from those that submit things to have distribute in the school.
So we've got a pretty good handle on who
a lot of these organizations are because we see them year after year.
Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Girls on the run.
One, the ones that are, you know, like
I don't know if they didn't doesn't, however, send home
information, you know, for sign ups and and that type of thing like that
that I don't think we should take it from just anyone and not have it
be vetted information, but things that are coming through.
Basically are recognized nonprofits.
Right. Things that we would be approving
to submit if they were doing paper distribution.
Because then in a perfect world, we could maybe eliminate
some of that paper that's being printed.
It might be not a bad idea or meet the borderline.
I don't want to I don't want to collapse that too.
But but it would be good if I guess
people need to spend some time on the website to learn how much is there.
You know, I don't
I don't think people really have a a good guide as to how to get through.
And I don't know if we would do that that night, but say, listen, here's
the school district.
And I you know, I've I've I've really tried to poke and
kind of learn all the nooks and crannies.
You know, one of the things that
it does have it has the morning
announcements out of everybody know is you can find the morning announcements.
And I found in our household that helps because sometimes that helps to
let your child know, oh, by the way, I saw the morning
announcements such and such as do this.
Where are you getting that permission slip?
And so so I just I'm just wondering if there's a way we can get the let people
know, encourage people to kind of work their way through the website
because there is a lot of information out there,
even like, you know, the home access center
that people know how they get, how they get plugged into that.
So let's think about perhaps using a little bit of time
on our school board night.
Just introduce them to the to the website. At least
that was realistically, nobody goes home at the end of a long day
and says, what do you want to do tonight?
Well, let's go the school district website.
And I know. I've gone down the rabbit hole of.
Looking. For one thing.
Like it's it's generally
when people are coming there, it's because they have a want or need.
That's exactly right. Yeah.
So you encourage people to do that.
But I don't want to digress too much off the community time
since I know like at the next meeting we're talking about the school board one
and then we've about kind of the home page.
But I do think maybe even by the time what's the time frame for that new
template?
I'd like to it'll be definitely before the end of the school year.
So that that may even work well for our last meeting
when we're talking about the home page.
Because I think one of the things I'm hearing from everyone is
a recommendation for the quick links and, you know, kind of identifying
maybe it's district wide and then by school because then
you won't have to come to the home page and then drill into the individual school
and then find something, you know, it would all be link up.
All right there. So
do we have a
like a giant touchscreen?
It'd be nice if we were having that having our school board
introduction night and we had a screen there with the website on anchor.
Just like when people have questions to say, Here's where you find this
good visual, right?
So I guess we'd have to see where.
You know, we don't have a of house.
Yeah, I don't think we could do a smart board per
se depending on where your house, but.
Yeah, okay.
But we can keep that in mind when we're
talking to the different schools about where they could house us
to see if one of those areas or maybe even talked to
some of the
their titles are totally missing me.
Like Kristen Minari,
the instruction
sounded like they, you know, always seemed to be really fantastic
at setting up the technology component of it.
And maybe that's something that, you know,
we could even seek some assistance with for that particular event.
So, okay, well, it's 546, so I want to jump over
to the
the Citizen
Advisor documents, but thank you for that discussion about the website suggests.
I'm sorry, Mr..
Are you still going to be running this off?
You're okay.
I'm sorry, I, I cut you off and put you back up.
All right, So what we'll do is we have the Citizen Advisor orientation document
and then the citizen advisors, the Standing Committees program.
These are two documents that had been created
by a previous board.
Brian Shiflett, I believe, put together the citizen visor orientation.
And what my goal here is, you know, in looking at it, when we were going through
the citizen advisory selection process and, you know, talking about how to orient
and do all of that, this
document, a citizen advisor
orientation document, covers a lot of the information that you need.
But one of the things for me is,
you know, as a district so much we focus on customer service
and we're constantly, I think as board members having that conversation
about the experience that community residents
and parents are having, you know, at the individual schools.
And so I look at that from the perspective of, so how are we
as a board providing, you know, the the welcome process
and making sure that citizen advisors understand their roles
when they're appointed to these positions and where to get information.
And so for this current year, we updated the Citizen Advisor
orientation document as it stands today and communicated
are each board chair to each board committee should have communicated
to the citizen advisors that were new that
this information is a draft currently
is not like an a an officially approved document by the board.
But you know, one of the things I think
our role in, in looking at all of this is
how can we enhance and edit the document to be
more applicable to the roles and to stay current.
But then also looking at it for particularly next year as we bring in
new citizen advisors, does that become part of an orientation process that the
that this committee would be
hold responsibility for, you know, helping to conduct and bring on?
Because
the way that it's kind of lived now for all this time
is that it's by committee and so then you run the risk of is every
one being oriented the same way you're getting access to information the same way
because it's solely dependent on the the board member
that's the chair of the particular committee they're serving on.
So I but I would love to see developed
and I guess I'm
putting the ask of responsibility on this committee is that we really are
diving into this information and then that could be used as a
an outline.
And so
to start off, I want to say thank you to everyone
that went in and looked at the document.
You know, Tricia did a great job very thoroughly
of going through on edits, particularly on the other document.
And you can see as and we're going to kind of keep working
through this as time goes.
But for the citizen advisors in the committee,
you know, I shared this with you electronically.
How was that?
How was it experience?
Do you feel that it would be
helpful to
to have an in-person type of orientation
where this information is covered and questions can be asked
from all citizen advisors and learn how to access?
Or do you think that the documents sufficient
to just be provided as a reference tool
I think is sufficient.
But I would personally, the way that I engage and observe information,
I would probably have preferred there to be an in-person
some sort of review, and I think that might help.
Like you said, depending on
what was in charge of individual committees,
they might not be as honest
as far as sending those links or whatever that may be, whereas responsive.
And so I think that'll be great.
I don't know who's shoulders that would go on to that, but
I would
think I would prefer to in person training.
I think.
Can I ask for some clarification?
Would you prefer that to be at the individual committee level
or are you saying there would be some sort of time
where all new citizen advisors, regardless of what committee
they're serving on, would have that in-person experience?
But I think it could all be done together, assuming
that there
and I think they are similar.
And in what we need to learn with the decisions a manager
and navigating some of these Google docs that sort of thing.
I'm assuming that it's standard the board for all of them.
So I certainly think it could be done a once and done thing.
And I guess kind of in my mind as I envision it, is a
you know, when citizen advisors are appointed that we have a date already
picked out and we say there's a citizen advisor, a new citizen advisor orientation
program, and it's an hour, you know, on this date that's already laid out.
And we put it out there and we put it out there
when we're accepting the applications that this is a date
that you may want to be available for if you're selected.
And then when they come in, we're going through this information of
what's the role of a citizen advisor and how do I find all of the information,
making sure everyone knows how to access the
the board docs policies because so many policies are referenced
inside every single one of the different committees,
making sure you know how to get into agenda manager
and view the, you know, the agendas and the minutes
and the attachments and kind of just giving that like higher level overview.
I think each individual committee would still hold responsibility
with the chair to be communicating
with their new citizen advisors on things that are specific to that committee.
Because I know like policy or curriculum
in particular would have a lot more committee specific.
I mean, I think it would be very helpful to have everyone.
It is a group, it certainly would be a lot more time efficient.
But I also think it's helpful to go through
even very briefly if I'm on, you know, curriculum.
I might have a question and not realize that.
Well, that's really something that's for policy.
And if you do a little blurb of each committee,
you're not in a vacuum or in a silo
and you get a big a very brief but big picture and then go over, like you
said, the rules, responsibilities, the meeting protocol, the agenda manager.
And then if the last 10 minutes you can meet with
the head of your committee separately, there's there's just
those citizen advisors got a little bit more deep, deeply or answer questions
about that specific committee.
And that would be, I think, a really valuable worth worthwhile use of time.
Yeah, I like the idea.
I think I'd been at an orientation slash reception where all the new advisees
come together, maybe come here and then we're able to kind of explain
the Citizen Advisor program why it's so important
just to kind of go over the ground rules that you're going to show for a meeting.
It's going to be tape recorded.
And, you know, there's going to be there's going to be an agenda
to prepare ahead of time. I think that would be great.
And I think there's some way
I would like to think it's also tie in somehow in this process
sort of acknowledgment and an informal thank you to the citizen advisors.
And I don't know if that means at the end of the term
or the end of the year, we we give some certificate or something
to do to acknowledge the good work of the citizen advisors
so that there's a little bit of an acknowledgment of what,
what, what they're doing for the benefit of the of the school district.
But I, I like the idea.
I think your idea is a good one.
Let's see this get the date out there early
at the very first part of the process.
You know, Mark, this date
we're going to have this evening and then I think no more than an hour.
I don't think we would even need that time.
But to get it to go over the ground rules and to let them know
how important their feedback.
You know, I think that's a
that's a great idea.
Anyone's have any other comments.
So in this particular document,
there are
let's see here like I added in,
you know, just the current chair listing
because it showed each one of the committees
and I think that it's beneficial that each year when the document is shared
that the current chair and information there
you know it is on the committee pages on the website but I think that it's good
just to include right on that document so it can be a full reference
on there, you know, for those.
So that was something that I just put in each one of the committee.
So would this committee be responsible for keeping that updated and maintained?
Well, I think that that would
be my recommendation.
I know as this committee, we've talked a lot about, you know, what, like kind of
what do we own as a responsibility and purpose for the committee?
And I think that that's something that, you know, could be really good going
forward is, you know, holding that process and maybe
working to do the orientation
and facilitate that
and making sure the document is updated
to combine these two into one.
Ultimately, the
can we probably and that's where like I want to even just to kind of review
and see what's repetitive, you know, and what's not.
And I think that that's maybe the action item, you know, going forward
for the next meeting is to compare the two documents
now that everyone has been able to read through and understand what that is
and then get in.
The mindset of this could be given as a reference document,
but we would also have maybe a hands on opportunity to to show
because right now we're using these two documents
as the only communication tool for citizen advisors when they're appointed.
How do we, you know, flip it around
the. Yeah.
So that section regarding
voting members versus non-voting members,
I'm not I'm still struggling with the language there because you know
in checking with our board operating procedures and I checked with Dr.
Winslow to about curriculum counsel and that statement is still true
so members on the curriculum council still their vote does matter
four are still is
is counted they are conservative voting members
whereas every other
committee it's only the board members that
their votes are responsible for an action item.
So do you think that it's more just the language because they were
I had put in just about the reference that citizen advisers are welcome
to vote in order to weigh in on decisions, but that only the votes of board members
will be counted for actionable items with the exception of curriculum, Council.
Yeah, I mean, I just I want
to somehow convey because, I mean, the next bullet point
conveys that a little bit, but only with the knowledge
of knowing what that means and and that it says that
to pull
you know all committee members
voting and non-voting should be pulled by the committee chairperson
and the outcome included in the report to the board
but it's still even with that sentence there it's still not
I just want I still want citizen advisors
to know that they still need to vote
and that they're that their voice in their vote still matters,
even if it's not for an actionable item,
but that it's still
you know.
So if so if for example, if you disagree on something, we will still record that.
If you agree on something that also be recorded and presented back,
especially if it's something that's a controversial item that
not everybody agrees on. Right?
In most cases, that's not going to be the case. But
So I'm so I'm just yes, I'm
just I'm not sure how to how to word that so that it's understood that.
So I don't want citizen advisors to come to a meeting and think that
they can't vote because their vote doesn't matter.
So I'm not sure how to convey that.
So we just need to. You just want to. Yeah.
Look at how to reword that to make it.
And then could this include like a we, I mean, I think including combining
them would be great.
They maybe have an appendix which is updated with the current
members and chair people on it because this is the body of it.
This other citizen advisors, the Standing committee program rationale on documents
is an even older document than the Citizen Advisor orientation,
and this was used in reference and I went back
and even listened to meetings like 2013 or 14
when they were going through the process of appointing citizen advisors,
because I think that in the past the actual timelines of an appointment
process was not ironed out or adhered to, whereas
I think now that is under,
you know, better organization.
But this is a document that was used just kind of to outline what our citizen
advisors, what's their job description once the application process,
you know, and who's on there.
Like you can see how old this is that it has, you know,
old names listed on it still. Right.
And so what I'm thinking is that as we
go through, let's identify the information that's in this rationale and documents
document and pull out what need
what we think should be inside the orientation one
to be able to consolidate this into one Citizen Advisor Program Reference Guide
instead of it being two separate documents or even called an orientation document.
Let's make a Citizen Advisor Program reference guide and we'll pull in
the rationale and the the reason why we have citizen advisors and what the
roles are there.
We'll look at the application process.
You know, all of this came out of the language inside
the form, the application form,
when we started accepting applications this year is kind of how we started it.
You've been talking about all of this in general.
So because it is 6:00
and we have to move on,
my action item would be to ask if ever we can go back into these documents
before our next meeting and bring forward recommendations
on what piece of these rationale documents you want to have carried over.
And and then we'll strike out and just continue to do it in the
in the Google document,
in the editing or in a suggested edits setting
so that we're not duplicating efforts
amongst one another and can comment through those
so that so that ultimately we would just want to have one document
that incorporates the best of both of these. Right?
And ultimately then that's a document that in when we look at the website
or something like that and what is the citizen visor
or when we're putting out the call for applications each year that we would
be able to say,
here's what it is and here's what it looks like.
And so even though they're going to get that when they're appointed, we're saying,
here's the access to that information, here's how we're going
to give that information and here's what we're going to adhere to
so that everyone's on the same page and understanding
any questions on that?
Dan, did you have anything from the District
communications update that was time sensitive that you wanted to share?
Not time?
Well, somewhat time sensitive, but I can be very brief.
You know, you had mentioned
earlier that, you know, customer service
was one of the driving things that we've been working on as a district.
One of the things that came out of some work
this committee did a couple of years ago related to new entrants
and for the last in 2017 and in 2018,
we did some after the fact survey work asking families
who had moved into the district what their experience was like.
We're going to do that again this year.
But it was advised and very rightly so, that
some of those folks are actually enrolling in May
and they're not getting the survey until the subsequent summer.
So we're asking them to think back, you know, 12, 11, 13 months.
So we're going to be doing one of those in January for the folks who enrolled
over the summer and this fall.
And then we'll do it again in the summer.
Then for the folks who come here over the winter and into the spring.
So that was we'll be doing that in January
for the folks who came in the summer or the fall.
So do you think that for the March 25th meeting we would be able to review?
Yeah, we can give some yeah, some some highlights of that information.
Okay.
So anyone have anything else that they'd like to address?
You just go.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for your contribution and your time this evening.
I'm going to now
move to adjourn at 6:04 p.m..
Thank you.