Okay. Thanks. Okay. Good evening, everyone.
I would like to call the
Monday, October 8th, 2018 meeting of the Communications
and Community Engagement Committee to order at 5:02 p.m., please.
And then
we'll do roll Call and just go around, because I know we have some new faces here
with us tonight, and we're excited to welcome new Citizens Advisors.
I will note that Dr.
Cronin will not be joining us this evening
and Cory Reed will be arriving around 5:20 p.m..
So I'm Lyndsey Drew.
I am the chair of this committee and a school board director.
And then if you haven't used the microphones before, there's
the button right in front of them.
Just press on that and the red light will appear.
And then when you speak that way, it'll record on the audio.
I'm Tricia Steiner.
I'm a school board member.
And I'm John Abraham, a school board member.
Dan, today representing the administration.
And a current citizen advisor
and citizen advisor.
Ashley Ms..
Young Citizen Advisor.
So welcome, ladies, and hello again in
Okay.
Just as a quick overview before we go to the next part,
since we do have new citizen advisors, we'll be going through this.
And it's
one of the things on our agenda tonight is to discuss the Citizen Advisor program,
but just kind of as a CliffsNotes version for you, if you're not familiar
on all school board Senate committees that Citizen Advisors are part of,
any time that there is a vote for action, only the school board
directors are able to participate in that vote, at least for this committee.
So when we do
anything such as approval summary minutes, only those of us that are board
members can motion or seconder or vote for that.
So I attach the summary minutes from the May 21st,
2018 meeting to the agenda as well as to the email.
Does anyone have any questions on that?
Okay.
Then if I could have a motion to approve those minutes please.
So moved
and a second.
Second
and all in favor of approval of summary minutes from the May 21st,
2018 Communications and Community Engagement Committee Meetings.
They i.
I none opposed.
All right,
all right.
Introduction of new citizen advisors.
We'll be able to jump back to this once Missouri joins us.
But welcome
to our new citizen advisors and we're really excited to have you.
As I explain in my email, we'll be formally
voting as an entire board tonight to confirm the appointments
of citizen advisors.
So technically you're still here unofficially with us,
but we didn't want you to miss
the opportunity to join this meeting since it is quarterly.
So I would love it if we could just take a moment
and have you give us a little bit of information about yourself as well as
and just for introduction purposes
and just let us know what your interest was in in serving as a citizen advisor
and if you have any questions in particular about this committee
meeting, my name, um,
my name's Melinda Curran.
I, uh, I've always been involved in the education.
I was a teacher for several years, took some time off with my kids.
I had a Parceria Moms, which is a Facebook group,
and I like to be
involved in my community, and I think education's important.
So I thought being a citizen advisor was a good way to get involved more.
All so it is a here.
My name's Ann Reeves,
been a parent of a district, probably 20 or so years.
First time in 27 years.
Leave an empty nest for kids to grown ups to in college.
And I was one of the first citizen advisors when the program first started.
And coming back in.
And even though we're not in the district anymore, it's very important to us
and has been a big part of our lives for so long.
I write a column for The Sun Journalists for a long time.
Thanks you.
My name is Ashley Young and I have two children in the district.
I grew up in Palmyra.
I went to my school district and then came back here to raise my family.
And and that's a great way to be involved in what's happening in their schools.
And I think the community in general
like we
thank you so much for your interest and your time in
applying to be a citizen advisor.
I think it's a really great way to to be involved.
And I know we were really excited this year
with the volume of applications that were received.
So thank you for doing that and thank you for being here.
Just to give a little bit of an overview,
in the past meetings, we Dan and I worked together
to kind of change the format of the agenda a little bit.
One of the things we talked about at the last
committee meeting was that we have sometimes struggled with
what does this committee's purpose serve and
what can we do to be able to
provide additional value
to the district as a whole And
historically, when the
committee was first created, there was a very specific purpose
for that with the communications audit and, you know, various
initiatives.
And over the past year or so, it's kind of become a
what was the term that you used and get get.
Tell us sit and get. It and get it really.
Show and tell us.
It was a lot of me
talking and a lot of board members and senators and advisors nodding,
which isn't the most productive use of of your talents and the board members times.
And not that we don't like to hear you
share information with us, but we want to make this more of an interactive forum
and really, you know, take a look and kind of dive into things.
And that's what we're going to
in the structuring of our goals as we work on defining our specific goals
for this committee for the 20 1819 school year, as well as
things like the Citizen
Advisory Program and the materials that go with that.
So we've now created the District Communications update
portion of the agenda, which is down right before what would be public comment
if there were any citizens and taxpayers here that would like to speak.
But we'll use that opportunity for Dan to be able to share various initiatives
and updates about programs like you'll see within zip Slip on there tonight.
Dan introduced that and let us know that was going to be
rolling out over the summer.
And so we'll kind of get some update there,
but it allows for us to make sure that we're focusing on things that
that we can make a little bit more tangible and and really
find some more value in.
So with that,
we'll move into unfinished business.
And our first item is 2018 2019 committee goals.
And so in May when we were talking, there was a,
you know, some different ideas that we had about
what do we want to do as a committee
and and how can we
consolidate those down into three,
you know, two or three actual goals.
And one of them was the
the idea of a meet the school board event.
And that was and suggestion.
And I think we all really
enjoyed, you know, as we started thinking about talking about it, we brought it
back to some of the other board members and felt like that would be
a great opportunity.
So and I in theory that the goal for it would be
to get outside of the district office, outside of a school board meeting,
and have an opportunity to interact and engage with
residents and parents and taxpayers,
not just in a formal setting where we usually are,
because most opportunities for interaction come from public comment.
And that's not a two way communication.
So I would want to open it up and see if anyone has any ideas.
But I would suggest that that be one of our goals for planning and executing.
I know we talked about when do we do that?
Because one trying to find a time that it works
for everyone's schedule and that to get nine of us,
you know, aligned with one event
or one at each building level, can we tag it on to something
where parents are already going to be at a school event
and so that we're not making things any more complicated or asking people
to spend or put one more thing into already busy calendars.
So no, especially now that we're
into October, everyone's family
calendars are just off the charts crazy.
So I don't know if anyone had any ideas
of how we want to
make that look as far as a goal,
I was just going to say I like the idea of tagging on
with a big event, you know, where people are going to already be at
and then if there can be a hey, during halftime at the football game,
make sure you come down to this area to,
you know, talk to any school board members are going to be there or have a table or
so I like the idea of having I'm not sure about back to school nights
because there's already so much to do and parents are already everywhere.
And a lot of us on the board are parents, right?
So I'm not sure if that's the best forum, but I think maybe like some
sort of sporting event
or something that's, you know, that's fun
and more lighthearted and that people
are already going to be out and be engaged
where we can, you know, show
just to show people that we're, you know, we're parents, too, or humans too.
And we want to connect with people
and find out what they're thinking and what's important to them.
I know one of the things I think Dan had mentioned last time, too, was
and I don't know when this was in exactly, but there was a
how to become a school board member event that was done previously.
And so I don't know if that's something that maybe we would want to
tag into this.
Or do you think I mean, this is something kind of it
had brainstorm with you out of you.
Yeah, that was a just for a little bit of background
that was done prior to the the last election and the notion was
we were going to have, I believe, five spots were up on the school board.
And we want to make sure, obviously, that we had really qualified
folks who were interested in running for this position.
And all three of us were elected last time.
So something must have worked.
And basically it was an open house style thing.
I believe it ran for about an hour and a half or 2 hours.
It wasn't super long,
but it was an open house kind of format that people could drop in
on their schedule and provided information on,
you know, how to file for the election,
give them some fact sheets about about what was expected of a school board
member, some background on school code,
some handouts from the Pennsylvania school Boards Association.
So again, it was informal.
It wasn't current board members or the administration
giving a lecture or PowerPoint presentation,
but basically opening up the folks to let them know, you know,
what's expected of a school board member.
And if it's something that interests you, then here's how you go about it.
And I think we did have a fairly decent turnout,
and certainly we had a good slate of candidates who ran in the election.
So I don't know. We can take all the credit for that.
But I do think that kind of event is something that could maybe be replicated
in an off election year.
So instead of become a candidate or meet the candidate kind of thing,
it's it's meet the folks who are serving your children.
So do you see that as being something that would be separate from them?
Is there anybody up for it?
There's nobody up for there's no this is not a school board election year.
The next primaries will be, if I could, just because I attended
that and I was really interested in becoming a board member.
However,
I think the timing of that with getting
some of the paperwork that you had to get in was a little too tight.
I personally, like I had some previously planned family obligations
that, you know, took place on the weekends when I went to get signatures
and like all that kind of stuff.
So I just couldn't meet the deadline, but maybe like
slightly further out from the actual deadline
to submit paperwork would have been a little bit more helpful.
So when was that? Do you remember what that definitely it was.
I went to that event as well and I went to that event,
you know, sort of on a whim
thinking, Oh, I'm just going to check it out.
And then because Jerry Feser was there, he made it really easy.
But it was it was, you know, it was on like a Wednesday
and the deadline to have your petitions in was the following Monday or Tuesday.
Oh, so that really was. It was. Yeah, it. Was.
I think it was sort of a last minute idea.
I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I can't speak to that.
No, I think that I think that's a fair assessment because of the time
in talking with well, with Jerry in his office,
there were two whole candidates at that point.
Right. Who had who had filed.
And so that was part of our interest in doing it, was making sure
that, in fact, we did encourage some folks to come out and run.
So, yes, I think it's fair to say
that the deadline was tight because there wasn't a huge it was like
this is something that was planned months in advance.
This was more like weeks in advance.
I think to the the meet or learn how to be.
School is still a political event.
And the whole goal of this is just to get away from politics.
I agree with.
All that stuff, and I like Tricia's idea of having a fun night.
If you have it at a specific sporting event,
then you're cutting out a lot of people who don't come.
I don't know.
I don't know when you would have it so that there'd be a place.
But you do want to make it fun and easy and just you don't want to make it a time
where your guys are going to be cornered
and you probably will.
Still, you want to make it more recreational than just political
and or confrontational as the board meetings usually are.
And I thought too, to further expand upon what Ann saying,
If the decision of this group is to recommend
something that isn't tagged on to an existing
district event, you might want to consider actually doing it off campus.
Because there is something about
when you walk into this building, I mean, it's sort of a regal stately.
It has the feel of it a administrative office, because that's what it is.
So if you're looking to do something
that's a little more informal and conversational, it's just an option.
You may want to see whether one of those Sturgeon
Foundation is looking at doing that. And I. Know as well.
What I really want to identify first and foremost is
we think that that's something that we should make a tender like
make one of our actual goals because they do have that meet
the school board event as a separate item and unfinished business.
So if we decide that that's something that we want to make, one of our goals,
then after our goal discussion, we can actually dive into
what are the good opportunities, when can we,
you know, start kind of putting something together to run past the administration
and the other board members, you know, to to look at dates and times and
and make some proposals on on location.
So is there anyone that think that
that's not a goal
that we would want to utilize, that we would want to use one of our
goals for?
I personally think that's a great idea.
I agree.
Yeah.
All right.
So that will be a standalone goal for the Committee for the year
two plan. Yes.
So then when we're looking at the other goals
that we want
to include and I'm trying to find minutes,
we talked about things
from communications and the,
you know, streamlining of that to the website
and maybe making recommendations as a committee on ways that
the website could be a more useful resource for families.
And I think we walk a very fine line in that from the role of this committee
versus the Dan, you know, Dan's role
and the administration
actually managing the website and doing all of that.
But I think
as I've been thinking through it over the last
couple of months, I think that, you know, maybe there would be some benefit, Dan,
if you would be open to it for the committee
to take a look at different areas.
I know we talk about communications as the vehicles
that we receive communication, but then just also how,
you know, everyone communicates together and then also the community engagement
component of it and how do we bring, you know, that kind of full circle
and as I've gone through just as a parent
using the website, there's so much information out there,
but it can almost be overwhelming sometimes because some things are here
and some things are there.
And if just if there's an opportunity for this group
to kind of be outside eyes
and ears and utilize our citizen advisors, you know, as real
everyday users of the website to be able to say perhaps we could have.
A concept that has occurred to me is of in the past
I've sort of used this group as an informal focus group
for some of these things, but perhaps we
would want to do it more as, as a more traditional focus group business
sort of thing.
And I could give you an exercise such as, okay,
fine, school board policy 903
and have you do that and then give me feedback about what your experience was,
because we know people will look for things in different ways.
And where I think
might be the most streamlined path, and that's the way I've set it up, might
not actually be what you as users are experiencing.
So I think there's some some value in an approach like that.
And maybe with the experience too.
I know that we have parents who think all of us are parents of
our various buildings, and so each one of those have their own
kind of standalone site inside of the district website.
But then you have teacher sites inside of that, right?
So it can be really overwhelming as a parent or like where the where was
this lunch menu is coming in 10 minutes and
you know, so something as simple as that.
And how do we make sure that people at their fingertips know the app is there and
make sure that their email is
where is what it should be and, you know, that type of thing.
But I also thought about I just emailed
Joe this past week because I looked at different areas
of the site from school services and bullying, you know, prevention.
I know we're going to have a presentation on the board meeting tonight
and I was like, There are some links that have expired and, you know, aren't
working correctly anymore and some information's over here,
but then some information is draw down on a few other pages and maybe
kind of where my thought saw developing is that this
committee could be that focus group
to make the, you know, recommendation of
things like
student services or, you know, the the,
you know, bullying prevention or second step, any of those
that we could
get recommendations on those specific areas of the site as well.
So not even just
an activity of finding and seeing
how accessible it is, but maybe
getting feedback and, you know, bringing that here
and putting it together and saying what if we could have all of this in one place?
If we were to do something like that, it would be most useful for me
if we were to to pick a specific area of the website
to sample student services rather than just saying,
What don't you like about the website or what do you like about the website?
I you know, if we were to look at as some specific area and understanding that,
oh, at the end of the day I'm the webmaster,
which would sounds fantastic, but there are lots of individual staff members
who have different editing rights and responsibilities.
So having something a little more structured
where we're a little more laser beam focused on a certain area
and maybe bringing in those staff members or me sort of being the intermediary
saying, Hey, here's some feedback we're getting from board,
and our citizen advisors, Have you considered this or it
might be a little bit more useful rather than just sort of
opening the floodgates for. Yeah.
I mean, I think you we go online a lot and we're down a lot of rabbit holes.
That's the reason I'm hesitant, is because this group in a piece
is kind of gone down that that road.
And they said it's you know, when you try and get a thousand directions.
So once you end up going nowhere.
So if there was a thought that there were a particular area, whether it be
the school board section or athletics or, you know, pick one of those,
there's big heavily use sections or lesser use sections that maybe
we should be drawing more attention to and focused a little bit more on that.
I'm certainly open to that.
So maybe even if we made it as a goal to as a committee, focus on several different
areas of the site from a community engagement and communications perspective.
And we all have, we can pick maybe 4 to 3 or four different areas
because at each meeting we could come prepared to having looked
at that and,
you know, brought forward recommendations and have a piece of our meeting,
be the conversation about that and have a deliverable to take,
you know, to give to the administration from that.
And I know, Lindsey, at this point in time,
you're just looking to develop those goals, right?
So that's one of those goals.
But I'll sort this out here anyhow.
To me, a logical place would start would be the community tab, since
this is the Communications and community engagement tab,
I'd love to start there because frankly, I don't know that it's a very robust
or well used part of our site and it seems to chime very well with
what the what the mission of this particular committee is.
It's not to say
we can't look at others, but I personally, I think would love to start there.
Okay. Thank you. Have a quick question.
I know you guys have so many meetings you have to go to.
It's a full time job, but it seems like quarterly meetings.
It's an hour long meeting and it seems like we get here,
we go over things we met in May, maybe seems like
seven years ago, and now we want me to end of December.
So I wouldn't want to put more on you guys.
But just from a layperson's perspective, it doesn't seem like it's enough to meet.
And we I feel like we're not getting much.
It takes us a while to get caught up from the last meeting.
So by the time you know, it's already 530
and then you want to end at six because you have your meeting in an hour.
So I don't know. That makes four.
That could be a goal.
Yeah.
So like I said, I'm on for more on you, but it just seems like we're not able
to do anything in an hour to get caught up with where we were five months ago.
Yeah.
And I know, you know, we had discussed that when we were looking at the schedules
for meetings this year and the way that it all falls in
and because it has to be here in this room and audio recorded,
you know, and working with everyone's
schedules, I know that that's a challenge sometimes to find where can committees
kind of fit in
to everything because a couple of the committees are quarterly
or, you know, every two and a half months or so.
And then policy and curriculum and finance
both meet 1 to 2 times per month.
No, I wish our policy be more policies, actually only quarterly.
Oh, is it okay for we end up writing our monthly so we have four and 5 p.m.
time slots
because then we go to an executive session at six before the public meeting.
So when we talked about it this year, I think because we hadn't really
we haven't taken the communications committee
where we wanted to go, but we have all of these ideas.
There wasn't really the ability to find
other homes, you know, to make it more often.
And I know when I talked to Cathy Seger about the dates for this,
when they were lining it up, I'm like, Well,
we need one earlier in the school year and I don't want to then wait
until the end of January because too much happened.
Like then all of a sudden we're more than halfway through the year and
how do we really do anything,
which is why we're meeting mid-December, you know, for the next one.
But I do think that that's something that
as we go forward, even if
this group and I can't speak
for everyone, but I'm okay with email and, you know,
putting those types of things together because we can't get
any more meetings added to the calendar for this school year.
But I think that we could build the activity of the committee
so that, you know, next year and they look at all the things
that we hit on this year, we need more time, you know,
and more frequency of meetings.
And I don't know if there's room other times or days.
I mean, it'd have to be on a non school board meeting day, which the ability
that like the four or five we could get together
because it always have to be recorded like we have a working out
if it's citizen advisors it doesn't Right. But
maybe it would make sense for them.
That's a good that's a good question.
I don't have an equally good answer to I mean if it's.
Yeah, last hour.
I talked to a solicitor or whether it's a function of extension
of the function of the board or not, I honestly don't know.
We get together and then one of us could give a report to
you and it would save some time. All right.
Some things that we're thinking about right now.
I mean, for example, we don't have more than three or four
board members on the committee because, I mean, not a quorum.
Correct. So I don't know.
I don't I think it's a question worth worth asking.
I don't want to give an answer here and be wrong.
The other thing I would say to to Ann's point is I also think and Lindsay's point,
knowing that we really kind of are limited to quarterly meetings,
I think that heightens the need to have some very focused goals.
So we may have a laundry list of things that we want to get to and maybe those
span out over three or four years.
So maybe we need to be very sort of laser focused on the two or three goals,
Max, that we think for for the committee this year.
I think we've already settled on one that's going to take some planning.
I think that's the sort of which.
Would have can be decided in meeting. I mean, yeah.
We wouldn't want to waste
right, the whole meeting, just talking about the logistics of that.
But knowing that maybe as we talk about what we want our goals to be,
again, I don't want to discourage good ideas, but
maybe we just need to be realistic about what can we legitimately accomplish
this particular school year.
But I'll it's a great questions.
I've never thought about, you know citizen advisors and or even you know for
board members of
adding more meetings or, you know, what's the possibility of that.
But I'll ask our solicitor tonight and find that out
to make sure it and communicate that with everyone.
Because if you're willing to do it
and have that, you know, offline conversation
so that these meetings are more productive, I'm all in for that.
I would rather see this time be more productive in the come together.
You know, at a minimum, I think the citizen advisors could
meet separately as long as that was something
that was acceptable and then maybe be on the same page
that we can present to you our ideas in a more concise manner.
Yeah, that's okay. Yeah.
So that's a great suggestion.
Thank you.
I'll find that out and get back to you after our meeting tonight.
But I think for the purpose of the call, maybe we do.
So the first one is the planning a community event
for interaction and engagement
with current board members.
And then the second one be.
Can we say we make it a
review of something along the lines of review
of meeting schedule and excuse me, opportunities so that we can make
a recommendation to the full board as they're planning next year's calendar?
I didn't phrase that very eloquently, but I you know.
I don't know that I want that to be one of our actual goals,
you know, that's published just because I feel like
doesn't really serve a purpose from a committee perspective.
I was thinking something along the lines of identifying
like one or two areas of the work.
You know, if we're looking at from the communications
and making recommendations
for how to enhance districts,
you know, web resource information presents.
The other one I'll throw out there
because it's on the agenda, is there's also been discussion
about the onboarding process for new citizen advisors.
My third and so again, with the notion of
after today we have three more meetings.
If we line up three goals,
we're kind of saying
a goal of meeting almost because, look, we've already spent
half this meeting just talking about what those goals are going to be.
So the more once we actually get into trying to achieve those goals.
So again, I'm not opposed
to any of these by any stretch of the imagination,
but I think certainly the the planning
of the event that we talked about and
this notion of what can we do better for onboarding,
not just for this committee,
but make recommendations and provide materials for other committees
so that certain advisors can hit the ground running.
There's going to be more work there than than folks might recognize.
So just those two alone
and again, I'm not opposed to any of the other ideas
that have been kicked around here or some that you may be folks may
have that haven't come to the table yet, but I'll just leave those two alone.
I think.
Yeah, I think with the website being more of a long term, broader goal,
you know, and really having our,
you know, our primary goal is being a community event situation.
And then the third one would be the onboarding development of the citizen
advisor process and program or program.
Other.
I have a quick question in regards to the
the title of the committee is Community Engagement.
Is it in community engagement with the board members
or is it just community engagement in general with the schools?
So it's a great question.
And that's where sometimes I think it might be a little bit misleading
then can use it to the inverse.
Yeah, the
and I'll give you sort of the committee long history in 2 minutes or less.
This committee started as an ad hoc committee
that looks at a very specific communication issue,
turned out fairly well.
Everyone's sort of happy.
And so when you have success, you say we've got to do more of this.
So media Communications Committee,
one of the Citizen Advisors
of Honor on one of those later iterations, made a very good point in that
we should take a look at what create an inventory of what sort of things
that we do, where we engage the community and bring them into the.
He was looking at it from the the lens solely of who do we bring into the schools
and are we missing opportunities
to make connections between the district and community entities.
So by creating that inventory, we can identify where we were strong
and where we had other opportunities that we can reach our school programs.
So that was really the notion of the community engagement.
Part of it is, is
how can we use the community to enrich what's happening in the classroom.
So that was really where the notion of community engagement originally came from.
But like anything else, it's constantly evolving and are open to interpretation.
But I do like the fact that this is something that's actually on
in in writing as an
hour is a responsibility of the school board, the community engagement piece.
So I don't think we're beholden to any one interpretation of it.
And that's what I like about.
Me looking at the avenue right now from the Citizen Advisor program
and trying to develop those materials because
and I do want to shift into that
part of the agenda, but
I see that as community engagement
and, you know, interacting with citizen advisors
and making sure that that program has more structure around it
so that citizen advisors have the best experience possible
in serving in that capacity on the various committees
and that each committee offers the same
orientation, if you will, because
once you're, you know, officially confirmed,
you're going to get the letter, then there's the electronic access.
And how do you get to that and how do you just not
how do you feel part of it to make sure that something that you're
can walk away at the end of the term
is feeling like you contributed and were a meaningful part of that?
And I think sometimes that gets lost. And
so that's where I see the direction from a community engagement,
at least for the short term,
because I think again, right now is a quarterly meeting.
It's we could look at the broad part of involving
other businesses into programs and taking ownership of all of that.
But that's a huge undertaking that we don't even,
I think, have a full grasp on it because we're not the ones
even just as the school board members who are bringing
those resources in from outside of it.
I think that's a really good question.
I had two thoughts, one of which is, before I forget,
I did take a look at our board.
Standing committees are ones you know, if you go through those, as I read those,
it seems like we've got flexibility
from.
The guidelines.
Two and
three. Yeah, I just went through those
and it seems like we have flexibility to schedule.
I think we have to have notice ahead of time,
but I think we're not we're not where I would think
we're not where to necessarily meeting once a month.
There should be some flexibility.
And I agree we should we should check with our solicitor.
I think your questions are good because I think people in the the
the folks on the board, we kind of live in this world of
there is administration, there's faculty there at the school board.
There's support staff.
And I think from from the published perspective,
all they know is their kids gone to Hershey School.
And it seems to me our outreach ought to be we ought to break down those silos.
And whenever out, which we do is I want to talk to somebody at the school.
I mean, I think that's so I don't think I don't see this committee being kind of
isolated to improving communication between the board and the community.
I think I think we're really should be open faced.
And my second thought is my second thought and I'll just kind of pin this to see
if we should consider having some folks from the administration
at our Meet the School board, because I think that's a must.
And I don't know if that's going to be helpful.
But let's think about that, whether or not, you know, at this event,
we also have the principals and some folks from the administration.
So people can kind of, you know, see those faces and those names.
I think I think that connection is already being made through other avenues. But
I do think, you.
Know, I think we have.
Got to get over these nuances of, you know, who's
what within within sort of behind the facade of the school.
And people ought to be able to find out what's going on at the school,
regardless of who they need to be talking to.
And and to further answer your question.
So you might ask a simple question.
You know, one of my longstanding concerns is
from a communications and engagement standpoint is we do okay
like a break more in patting myself on the back or my colleagues in the back.
But we do okay with communicating with our core constituents, i.e.
parents and guardians.
I can't sit here and that we do even okay
with the other 80% of the township who don't have students in our system.
So when I think of community engagement, I'm thinking of it from from that lenses.
What can we do more to open those interactions between those folks who
whose kids don't come here and aren't as closely vested
and whose only communication from the district
might be that once a year tax bill that they get
to go,
Yeah,
that really didn't answer
your question, did you?
And if I could,
it comes down to that shows that this committee
has evolved over time
without a lot of direction and purpose.
And that's where I see the opportunity
to kind of
turn that we are and and change that a little bit,
you know, and really sleeves up and be able to to, you know, bring
meaning to it.
Because I do think that there's importance in having the conversations and
whether it's planning of a you know, community engagement
event from a school board member perspective
or if it's even just talking about the way that you find things on the website.
I mean, there's to me there's value in that because it brings in that outside
perspective.
And as a community, everyone's supposed to be contributing, right?
You know, from the ideas and, and all that.
And sometimes it can be hard because you have
silos and, you know, you're looking at the different parts of it.
You don't know how to make all of those talk.
And so I see this committee kind of as being the way like policy
has a very specific purpose, finances, specific purpose, curriculum
of there's this isn't well, this isn't fall into one of those
but I see this as an opportunity to make it what we want to be.
You know I once again suggest before forget again, maybe we ought to reach out
to folks at the SBA if they have any kind of resource or expertise.
And how then,
you know, what's their approach on trying to enhance community engagement.
So maybe there's somebody there that we can and I don't have a problem
reaching out to those folks to say, hey, listen, I'm on the board.
We have this committee where we're looking at goals.
Do you have any resources or anybody that we can that I could talk to?
And there's a pretty good reason that.
Kind of things
is that in Derry Township, community engagement isn't usually an issue.
Like you go back to school night and was there 90%, 95%.
Understand, we live in a remarkable district.
You know, it's just I think with what
Dan said, trying to focus more in on and I just want to add one thing.
You know, with this back to that meet the school board,
If we are able to meet, maybe what we could do is
we could start putting it together.
I mean, we got great minds here.
We could give you some ideas because if not, I think
we're not going to get anywhere. Great.
So we I don't know.
Do you go You work full time. I do.
But I say, okay, so we might have more flexible schedules than you guys know.
If the five of us get together, we could,
you know, it's probably probably not going be able to do it this year,
maybe 2019, maybe January, when everyone's kind of burnt out.
It seems like it might be hard to do it before then.
Yeah, I'm looking at school year, so
sometime between now and June of 2018,
going on over people mad at each other and,
you know, making
time to, you know, we could go to the library.
It's a great place.
So I think that what we'll do is you've
kind of jumped around a bit from the agenda.
Purpose is we're going to look at our goals as one
specific event.
And then to, I think broadening just the looking
at the resources and
way that community engagement happens,
we can give it very broad,
but we don't need
to keep kind of like hashing out, I think the specifics of that.
Yeah, I think we all have the understanding of what we want to see.
Correct? Course. Yeah.
Come on over in now.
Go right ahead.
And I think one of the empty seats.
And if I can. Well.
Well, she's coming to the microphone to join us
then she suggests it sounds like we have to.
And the third goal then I'd like to suggest
is the one this here is an additional a new business is sort of a citizen
phase of both, not just the onboarding, but actually the recruiting of
And I think there's an area where I feel very strongly
that all those folks who have come to us as citizens, others
probably have better perspective than anybody as to, you know,
what would be the best way to reach, you know, how did they get engaged,
will be better ways to get their neighbors engaged.
So I think they have an
invaluable expertise there because they're the ones who came to us.
Right. And so what what attracted to them?
What would attract them more So both the recruitment
and the onboarding, I'd like to see as part of that.
And that, if I may be so bold, would give us three pretty good goals.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I agree.
So I think that what we should do
is have those focuses on the goals and then on the Meet the School board
event item.
We're just going to leave that in unfinished business
because we want to find out and make sure that it's okay through the solicitor that
work happens, you know, as citizen advisor group
having one or two of us join you of that and then we can
work between now and
then so that for the December meeting we lay out very specific
the dates that have to be each one of the buildings.
Would it be a district as a whole?
I think the conversation also can happen outside
and then back again in a public recorded perspective, talking about
do we want it to be administration and school board?
Because I think the initial conversation was that we want it
to be just school board members so that there was
that, you know, separation.
So it wasn't
like a board meeting or, you know, another committee meeting.
And then we'll be able to launch forward
and start doing things.
And if we can do stuff offline,
I think it'll take shape over this year.
Everyone go with that.
Okay,
So with 15 minutes left, our goal so quick.
But the next part is Citizen Advisor program.
And since all three of our new citizen
advisors are here, we now for citizen advisors
who will be going on with us.
There are a bunch of there's a not a bunch.
So there are a couple different documents
that are out there today that discuss the citizen
Advisor role and so
in looking at it and as we were, you know, putting it out
there, I know for example, I before I was on school board,
I applied to this as an advisor to this committee
and was
appointed for the position.
But then there wasn't a meeting before I was elected to school board.
So then my position as a citizen advisor on this committee sat vacant.
We put the application in January or February of this past year.
You know, we put the application out there
to try and fill that spot and have another citizen advisor.
We didn't get any applications.
And then every school year, the start of every school year
is when the terms roll over for the existing standing one.
So for example, this year we had 16
vacancies for citizen advisors because terms were coming up
for their spots that still needed to be filled.
And I was concerned we weren't going to get enough applications
because we hadn't gotten any further on.
And so that was where
during the process of collecting the applications,
I emailed Dan and said, Can we send the thousands of email as well?
Because right now it's only on the website and it's only on Facebook and I feel
we're missing a huge opportunity, you know, for folks.
And I do think that that ended up being pretty successful
because when we looked at the applications that
I'm neurotic and I looked at the
timestamps to see if that was a successful initiative,
because part of the whole communications is how we reaching people, right?
So we ended up with 25
individuals interested in those 16 positions.
And I would love to see that happen every year because there are two
they're either one or two year terms
for the citizen voters.
So every school year we're going to be going
through this process of welcoming and accepting applications
for new citizen advisors.
In the past,
there are draft documents that have been put together.
There's a Citizen Advisors, two standing committees program
that was from quite some time ago in 2013.
It's still in draft form.
I had to go back and listen to meetings from like 2013 to
see what, you know, the document even was
it was never even formally approved or recognized by the full board.
But it outlines what is a citizen advisor, implementation procedures,
how we go about seeking the advisors, what's on the application.
One of the other reasons that this came up was I sent an email and said
we even have an orientation process.
Is that something that we can do and put together?
Can we invite all citizen advisors who are appointed to come together
at one time instead of just in their committees?
Because right now it's that each individual committee chair
welcomes their citizen advisors when they're appointed,
and so everyone could be getting it differently.
So how do we make sure everyone has the same experience as a citizen advisor?
And then is there a document?
And then
in, you know, my random
emailing of those questions and Cathy Seger, remember that
another passport member had put together a citizen advisor
document
that we weren't all aware of?
You know, that's out there that kind of gives an overview of the meeting protocol.
What's the role and responsibility?
An overview of what each committee is the agenda manager for how to find that.
And so we realize, one, we're short on time right now, you know,
for rolling out any type of orientation.
And so that's where it came up. Okay.
Well, let's see if the Communications and Community Engagement Committee
can bring that back and kind of own it for next year.
We can do that.
And so it's going to stay with each committee chair
as to welcome citizen advisors for this year.
But what my goal is in this is to develop this and kind of create an understood
process and procedure
so that
starting with the next school year
will be able to say here, you know, the definite here's how we welcome here's,
you know, where the feedback is from the citizen advisors.
I think that there should be, you know,
a survey at the end and doing that.
And so this is going to kind of be a work in progress
once we have
the ability to get you on the agenda.
Manager, which I'll work with the new folks
on after tonight's meeting when you're officially confirmed
so that you can get in and see these documents because
they are all attached inside of the agenda manager
to look at that because we want to try and consolidate
and then make sure that it refers back to the board of guidelines or the
board operations
guidelines and how that relates to the committee.
So how you do that.
So I think
the best way to do that will be to
get everyone
the access to these documents and then maybe bring forward.
And we do Google Docs,
if we can put it in a place that we could all take a look at. It.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Has red lines to it.
Yeah.
To and we can share Google docs like the
our district Google docs outside of district emails, right?
Sure.
And same thing.
I mean we can we can once folks have access to a gentleman
there, I'll be there but they won't have, as Mr.
Abel pointed out, necessarily have editing
capacity on documents which Google Docs gives you.
But as a starting point, there's two things. One,
we talked about the the the application when you present your applications.
One of the other things that came out that was community feedback is the
are you U.S. citizen question.
And so that was the primary goal today for us to report back.
Currently we have on the application
that it says, are you a U.S.
citizen?
And as we're going through right,
that question seems entirely irrelevant to me.
It's not an appropriate for citizen
advisor and
was it did we figure out that it's based on board member?
You have to be with us.
I spent an entire day trying to find the history of of
where some of the language came from, and
it was in some places that existed, other places it didn't. But
the best
guess, and I'll admit that is a guess that we have is when we move
to doing soliciting these applications electronically.
Use the same point in time where we had a board vacancy
and we were soliciting applicants to fill that midterm
board vacancy, to be a board member, you must be a U.S.
citizen.
We think we probably just took the boilerplate language
that said to be eligible, you must be an okay
and more of that unintended really into the citizen advisor.
And so it shows up as a requirement, but there's no legal requirement
that it be there.
So really the only discussion that I think we need to have is as a board.
Do you want to put that
the sense I've gotten is that, no, we don't think we need that,
but we've those conversations all sort of been offline.
So I think this opportunity for for this committee to say this, to.
Be able to go back to meet and say the
Communications and Community Engagement Committee is recommending
that that question should not be a part of the application any longer.
And to be clear, it's it's not a question on the application.
There's just a preamble to the application that says.
Oh, it says you must be a U.S..
Right?
It's just a president.
There should be an check answer now.
Correct?
Yeah, it's not a specific question, just it's what we use in the press release.
And for lack of a better term, the job description of what a citizen
advisor is, that's one of the things that shows up in that long list of
must be 18 must provide the township must have an interest in
education, must be a citizen.
So really I think it's a matter of of does this committee
want to make the recommendation to the board to have that stricken
from that job description.
In my recommendation
three, yes, because I don't think that that has any
bearing on someone's ability to serve as a citizen advisor,
any other feedback.
That's such a huge population in our district to people who come here to work.
All right.
I actually and this is for us, right?
It's not for a board member, right?
Because we're there.
There is a legal requirement.
There is no such. Right.
Because I was looking at it even to from like the employment perspective.
I'm like, I think that you can't even ask that
because typically, are you authorized
to work in the United States
from an employment perspective?
But you're not an employee, you're not seeking employment,
there's not any school code requirement.
So I don't want to inadvertently carve out
a section of population in Derry Township.
Those people who could, you know, serve.
You know, there doesn't seem to be a
there's
certainly not a legal reason to have it there.
And it doesn't seem to be a functional reason, particularly.
Yes, we were fortunate this time that we had 25 applicants for 16 spots.
But as you noted,
it wasn't all that long ago that we had zero applicants for an open spot.
And I would hate to do anything that disenfranchizes somebody.
But I agree wholeheartedly.
Okay.
Since we have just a couple minutes of it, I one thing on the citizen visa program.
So I think what we'll do is I'll send out I'll get these all into Google Docs
so that we can kind of look through and I'll highlight some of the areas
and show where I want to go together and then we can work on that
together.
At one of the things I was curious about from the Citizen Advisors
is what
being a citizen advisor look like for you?
Like what?
What is your goal in doing that, in applying to become one?
You know, do feel you have a good sense of what that is
because I feel like that's a really big starting point for
structuring the program and you know,
if we're going to make a recommendation as a committee of
owning the Citizen Advisor
document.
Yeah, what's what's, what's the motivation, What's the expectation?
And, you know, I would like to start with the question of of
what do you feel like you should know?
Because I'm sure we assume
that you have certain expectations or certain knowledge.
And I'm not I'm not vastly different than and that's not
that's not fair to anybody.
I'm looking at, you know, and I'm going to keep coming back to you
because you've been a citizen advisor, you know, for so long.
Has your experience as a citizen advisor
meant what you thought it was going to be?
Not really.
I mean, I think when we first started out, we were the
we were the Pioneer citizen advisors.
We had a lot more input.
We learned a lot more things.
This experience is more often so over time.
Is it by committee?
Do you think it just function?
I mean, how can I think that the task is it seems too big
and the focus is too small.
So we're kind of like, what are you
you know,
I'm not thinking about you guys was just in an hour.
What can you say? You are an advocate.
You know.
Well, and as has been noted, you know, other committees have,
by their nature, more specific function in policy as, okay, we've got
you know, they've got it
they've got a calendar of going through all the board policies on a regular basis.
So, you know, you've got to hit review policies.
Every meeting budget.
We know we have to come out of finance, We know we have to come up with a budget
every year and there's certain tasks that need to be met, a lot long lines,
whereas we're a little more open ended, which is.
So I. Guess which is what.
Has frozen at the current citizen.
So our new citizen and current and the board members here,
as long as we are okay with that from the operating guidelines
and the solicit are everyone is okay with reviewing documents
and doing things outside of those scheduled meetings
so that if you're getting together as citizen advisors,
you know, to develop recommendations and then also working on online
electronically, you know, with the documents, you're all okay with that?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, we can take notes, too, when we get together.
If you need to have some kind of a record of a meeting in transparency,
definitely could take notes.
And just one more thing.
I'm sorry I'm talking so much is just, I think
not being a voting member of the committee and not really
just kind of like the eyes and ears, not the mouth.
If we had some idea of our expect or what you expect of us, that would be great.
Yeah, I wanted to speak about the voting part
because I think the roles and responsibilities is confusing.
I came up against this in another committee that I'm a part of
because it's been our understanding as board members
that only board members get to vote and the citizen advisors do not vote.
But that's actually not accurate.
Completely separate curriculum.
Well, no. Even so.
So the way that I understand it, which which
was a situation that came up during the policy meeting
and I was advised by CAM, our solicitor said that all members need to vote.
So citizen advisors and board members vote.
Okay, but the board members vote are the ones
that can move an action item.
But it's important personally because I think that that gives but
it's important to have all the advisors vote, especially when you're talking
about something that might that not everybody might not agree upon.
So that that's recorded for the record.
So I so I think that we should work on this language a little bit in the role
of about that then I don't like the using the term non-voting member.
I think that
because because those advisors are voting members and their voices are important,
it's just for moving actions to the to the full board.
We still have to have a quorum of, of board members on a committee.
Right.
But if we can, we work that out a little bit.
Yeah, because I agree.
I think
if everyone gets to have a voice in the say and
and a vote, I mean
gives more purpose
anyone so for the new
and again I apologize you're right no meetings ever
but I'd like 15 more things we could talk about
any expectations that you have coming in
as citizen advisors or maybe is that something to think about?
And when I send out the Google doc
and and do that, maybe we can incorporate that piece of it.
So when you're thinking of that, when you review,
I think
for me I was just looking to, to be more involved.
So like I said before,
I guess I came in with the assumption that that would be expectations for us.
But it sounds like we don't have that quite narrowed down yet.
So maybe that's something that we can work on.
I agree.
I think that I was expecting there to be a project presented,
So my biggest question would be more what are our parameters
and our guidelines?
And it sounds like some of those questions
that we have need to be discussed this visitor
and you can let us know from there, but that would be
I think the biggest piece of the puzzle for me is where our limits were.
I just kind of
okay, so I will find that
out from the solicitor because I think that that raises great points.
And I think that ultimately my goal for the
reworking of these documents, sources
and advisors to make it more engaged,
active experience for everyone.
So okay, so unfortunately,
we're up against time.
So zip slip update.
Dan, are you do you want to do anything that.
No, I will keep this mercifully short
zip slip is is a technology that we started
using this year of those of your parents hopefully have created your accounts
and got some of the documents that we sent out electronically.
There were some challenges.
We did not expect implementing that,
none of which actually had to do with zip slip itself.
There were some changes with our student information system and all of a sudden
our student information
system was not talking to other programs, including Zip Slip,
which was a frustration.
But on the positive side, in going through the process of getting that
resolved, it put us ahead of the curve on some other areas.
So, for example, we have a much better handle on
parent contact information for one call now. So
basically this
just let you know that
we said in the spring, hey, we're going to do this, that sort of thing.
We did the initial back to school sort of push with that.
All those were coming from the district level.
The next step of this is to work with our building administrators
and see where there's opportunities for them at the building level
to be using zip slip as a way to send out electronic documents, gather signatures
where they need them
at the building level, and then we'll have the discussion of in the future.
Do we want to take that down to the classroom level as well?
So we start at the district level.
Next phase here is to get with the building
principals, identify partners at the building level
and utilize that more throughout this year.
And then in the outyears, we'll look at how far down do we want to draw list.
We want to take it to the grade level.
Do we want to make it a classroom level?
There are infinite opportunities and infinite challenges with
as we go forward.
Okay.
So just as a final rule, if there's no public there's no one else
here, so there's no public comment to be had.
So takeaways before we adjourn for three
new citizen advisors, I'll be reaching out to set up the time.
Hopefully we can connect our calendars and all get together at once so I can go
through Agenda manager and make sure that you're fully on board with that.
So again, then I'll be as I find out about the meetings, I'll send an email out.
And then I would also encourage
as we're thinking through all of this and I'm hearing all this, I'm like,
This is the perfect time for citizen advisors, even in this committee,
to make citizen advisors what to grow it and make it even more,
you know, what you have in your mind and make it more.
Yes, yeah.
Experience.
So if you have ideas, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email.
And also include my I think you have my phone number
and the emails that I had sent,
but I'll put that out there and see, you know,
how we can further develop.
Thank you for being here and
all right success sex with to
because we have to be in executive session but
to all of you probably this week thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.